Martyr (36 page)

The confrontation with the magistrate Richard Young had shaken Jane to the core. “I can’t work, Catherine, but I have so much to do. There is cheese to be made, linen to be repaired, hose to be darned, preserves to be bottled and stored …”

“Jane, stop it. You’re not helping.”

“If only Mr. Shakespeare were here. I won’t sleep tonight for worrying. What if the magistrate comes again? What if he brings Topcliffe?”

Catherine took Jane by the shoulders and made her sit on a bench at the table. “They
will
come, Jane. And that is why you must stop this. Take a deep breath. We must think.”

Jane breathed deeply. It did not help. She was worried less for herself than she was for Catherine and the two children. “We have to get you and Grace and Andrew away from here, Catherine.”

“Yes. They will come back in force tonight and they are utterly without pity I must tell you, Jane, they are so soaked in blood that they will think nothing of killing us all. My master, Mr. Woode, could well be dead by now. But even that will not make them falter. They are relentless; their thirst for vengeance will not be slaked even by a death. They will take his children and break them on the Bridewell treadmill as a warning to others.”

Jane hugged Catherine and gave her a weak smile. “How can you get out, then? I am sure we are being watched. There is no secret way out. If you try, they will take you straightway in the street. You will be done for.”

“Well, we can’t simply sit here and wait. There is no hiding place, you say?”

“None that they would not easily discover.”

Catherine and Jane were in the small kitchen, amid the pots and cooking utensils. Jane had been making candles and the debris of her work, wax and wicks, lay on the table before them. A helpless silence descended. Upstairs the children slept, unaware of the fate that awaited them.

“I suppose I could try to talk to Mr. Secretary.”

“What would his reaction be? Does he not back Topcliffe to the hilt? Would he not turn us over to him?”

They had been over this ground before. Catherine felt sick with dread. This should have been the happiest time of her life, days of honey with a man she loved, but he was gone and there was no way of knowing when—or if—he would return. The message delivered from him to Jane merely said he had to go away west immediately and that he would be gone a few days. Inside the message was another, hastily written on a small scrap of paper, folded and addressed to Catherine.
Would that I had poetic words in me. All I can say is that you are my love and I love you. Hold firm until I return
. It had made the small hairs on her neck stand and a shiver of warmth spread out across her breasts. She had folded the paper again and put it within her bodice.

Jane raised her head suddenly, as if struck by a thought. “Perhaps …”

Chapter 41

T
HE GUILDHALL WAS LIT BY A THOUSAND CANDLES
. Guests would soon begin to arrive. Shakespeare paced the main hall. He had examined the building in detail, seeking out every entrance, every staircase, every window through which a shot or crossbow bolt might be fired. He and Boltfoot had interviewed and searched every member of staff: the footmen, the cooks, the master of ceremonies, the musicians. And he had put them on alert in the event they should see anything at all out of the usual.

He had left Drake under the protection of Diego; they would, of course, be the last to arrive. Boltfoot, meanwhile, had come ahead, trudging through the cold, blustery streets by the docks, his heavy left foot dragging behind his squat body. He was now positioned by the grand doorway where all the guests would enter wearing their finery. Shakespeare had questioned Boltfoot yet again about his confrontation with Herrick in the aftermath of the shot from the chandler’s attic in Deptford. He’d picked at his brain, desperate to find more clues about the assassin and his appearance. “Most of all, Boltfoot, would you recognize him again?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Shakespeare. I do not feel confident. I did not get close to him.”

“But you are the best hope we have. You must have some kind of impression. Use your instinct, Boltfoot. Look at the men’s faces carefully. We know Herrick is clean-shaven and that he is tall. Study any such men closely. Maybe he has stuck a false beard to his face or disguised his height by walking with a stoop. If you have any doubt about someone, however small, take no chances. Stop them and search them. This Herrick will come; it is his last chance.”

Shakespeare himself had borrowed a suit of clothes from the butler at Buckland Abbey. It enabled him to move at ease among the throng as people arrived; as a mere serving man he would attract no comment.

The hall was high-ceilinged with fine pargeting and great colored windows, but it was not big and the guests would quickly fill it. As the evening wore on, and the claret and malmsey flowed, it would become increasingly difficult to spot who was coming in or going out, who was bearing arms or advancing on Drake. In such a crush of sweating bodies, a poniard, even a wheel-lock pistol, could all too easily be concealed.

They began arriving at seven of the clock, just as the church bells chimed nearby. Shakespeare took a deep breath. “This is it, Boltfoot. We know he will be here and that he has no fear. The way he walked into Buckland Abbey proved that. If only Lady Drake could stay by the door with you, for she must recognize him better than anyone; she has taken a cup of wine with him in her own withdrawing room. But her thoughts and attention will most certainly be occupied elsewhere.”

Boltfoot looked unimpressed. He was convinced that Drake was immortal, that he had signed some pact with the Devil. He had seen him exchange fire with the finest soldiers of Spain, brave arrows and spears flung at him by native peoples the very globe over, walk tall and strong when all others were falling down with sickness in mid-ocean. Whatever happened, he never shed his glow of invincibility; he was untouchable. Could a mere mercenary, a mortal with a wheel-lock sent by Philip of Spain, do him any harm? Boltfoot rather thought not.

The guests wore glittering clothes, studded with dazzling gemstones. This was not the royal court with its plethora of exquisitely cut gowns, but the clothes were costly nonetheless. Plymouth was a wealthy port. After London, it was the hub of England’s trade with the world. Here lived hard, unsentimental men—Hawkins, Drake, and their extensive families, all cousins with one another—who plundered Spanish treasure, who stole men and women from their beds in western Africa and sold them as slave labor in the Indies, who found spices and cloth and jewels from the earth’s most far-flung shores to sell in the capitals of Europe. Their wealth, however ill-gotten, shone as gaudily as the night sky in this hall. Shake speare doubted that there was a single gemstone in the hall paid for other than in blood.

The tables, formed in a great U shape, were bedecked with candles and silver plate. The guests all thronged in the center of the hall, where, after feasting, there would be dancing. In a corner, the musicians played the songs of old England, passed down through Devon’s generations for hundreds of years. This was not a time for mournful ballads.

Drake and his lady arrived last, to thunderous applause. He wore a saffron yellow doublet topped by an enormous ruff of fine lace and a cape at his shoulder. The Vice Admiral bowed with a sweep of his cape, and Lady Drake, in her finest blue velvet and cloth of gold gown, curtsied with a radiant smile. They were accompanied by Diego. Drake caught sight of Shakespeare in his butler’s livery. “Fetch me a cup of brandy, my man,” he said, laughing. He and his wife walked sedately to their seats at the head of the main table, acknowledging the applause and cheering of the guests every inch of the way. He vaulted onto the table with the agility of a man half his forty-six years, puffed out his broad chest, and clapped his hands.

The crowd fell silent. Drake stood, legs asunder, hands on hips, as if he were on the deck of a royal galleon with a fierce northeasterly in his gray-red hair. His eyes shone. He had his audience, his people, where he wanted them: in the very palm of his hand.

“Welcome, welcome one and all. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow our fleet sets sail into the teeth of the Spaniard’s jaws, where we shall blow out his brains and tear his heart from his cowering chest. Let Philip and Santa Cruz tremble with fear, for I will discover them, mewling in their lair, and turn their great towering ships to matchwood. But first let me tell you a little of the ways of this craven prince: he has sent a Fleming for to kill me; a man of dishonor who would kill by stealth for he is afraid to stand in open combat. I am told he will be here tonight. Well, Mr. Fleming, here I am! Draw your pistol, take aim, and fire.” Drake thumped his hand against his chest. “Here is my heart. Shoot it to death, by God’s faith.”

He stood back and looked around the room. The silence was absolute. All eyes were on the Vice Admiral. He cupped his ear with his hand. “Hark, do I hear a pistol being cocked? Mind you come closer. We don’t want you to miss now, as you did once before.”

An explosion tore the silence. The guests shrieked and ducked down as one, an instinctive reaction to the force of the blast. All eyes turned to the back of the hall, where a man stood holding a smoking wheel-lock. Then everyone looked back at Drake. He stood where he had before, unflinching, hands on hips even more aggressively, chest pushed out until it might seem he would burst his doublet, his face creased into a scornful grin.

Shakespeare pushed his way through the throng toward the gunman. He was about to leap on him when he stopped in his tracks. The gunman, too, was grinning. His red hair and shoulders were covered in the plaster that had fallen from the ceiling, where he had loosed the ball from his pistol. He looked back at Drake, who was laughing loud.

“’Tis my little brother Thomas, Mr. Shakespeare. He has let off his pop-pop into the ceiling. Would you take him away and lock him up in Plymouth gaol?”

Shakespeare shook his head in dismay. By now the whole room was laughing with gusto until the walls echoed.

Drake clapped his hands again. “Forgive me, Mr. Shakespeare. It was a jest we could not resist. Now let us say grace and give thanks to the Lord for the fare we are about to receive.” He clambered down from the table and called on the Bishop to lead them in prayer.

The banquet proceeded in disorderly fashion. The din of laughter and conversation was as loud as a score of anvils being hammered. Shakespeare was worried. He offered to taste Drake’s food for poison, but Drake would have none of it. Worse, if the killer had been anywhere in the vicinity when Thomas Drake shot his pistol, he could well have found his way into the hall under cover of the confusion; all the plans to search and examine those coming in could have gone up in smoke.

As the evening grew ever more wild, weapons were produced and mock sword fights staged along the center of the tables. Drunken guests kicked food and silver and candles around like so many pirates. Drake clapped his hands whenever he felt it was time to tell another story. At one stage he called for silence and demanded prayers for his cousin John, a fellow sea captain, captured by natives and then by the Spanish on the River Plate. “Remember, while we eat and drink, my cousin molders in some Spanish hole in Peru. If he could hear me now, I would say ‘Keep strong, John! Keep the faith and spit on their saints and relics!’”

The dancing began. Riotous voltas and galliards; not for these revelers the sedate elegance of the pavane. The men threw their ladies high into the air, and occasionally dropped them, sprawling in a drunken heap.

Diego came up and slapped Shakespeare on the back. “I am sorry about Sir Francis’s little jest. He insisted on it.”

“This is folly, Diego. Drake jests, but this man, this Fleming, will come tonight. He may be waiting in the shadows outside; he may be here already inside. But I tell you, I know he has ridden here and he believes this to be his last chance. I think he is without fear for his own life.”

A drunken couple staggered into Shakespeare. The man wore the mayor’s chain of office and had his hand clasped to the woman’s breast and his mouth at her neck; she had her hand held firm at the front of his breeches. Shakespeare pushed the amorous couple on their way, stumbling around the room in their curious impression of a dance. “Good to see him taking care of corporation business,” Shakespeare told Diego. “I fear Mr. Secretary would not approve of any of this.”

“Definitely not. But Mr. Secretary does not stand on the deck of a warship driving it straight into the guns of the enemy,” Diego replied. “They are enjoying life while it lasts, John. Tomorrow we set sail. This may be the last time you see any of us.”

“This is certain fine, Diego, so long as you all do set sail on the morrow. Your Vice Admiral included.”

The banquet was rapidly descending into a free-for-all. Beautifully prepared food was flung across the tables; ale was drunk from pitchers so that it ran from the mouths of men and women, down the sides of their jowls and onto their fine clothes. Shakespeare watched in despair. All he could do now was stay close to Drake and scour the room for anything untoward, while Diego and Boltfoot watched the doors. Yet men and women were slipping in and out all the time.

Drake broke off from a heated conversation with young Richard Hawkins, son of his old friend John Hawkins. “Enjoying yourself, Mr. Shakespeare? Your brow seems uncommon furrowed tonight.” He turned to his wife. “What say you, my lady?”

“I would say, Sir Francis, that you should be thankful for the care that Mr. Shakespeare is taking concerning the preservation of your life. I think you owe him better manners, sir!”

“Hah! Roundly told off. I would rather be cut at by a Spaniard’s halberd than feel the edge of a woman’s tongue.”

Someone shouted “Fire!” It was a word to drive fear into the hearts of stout men. Even those stumbling about with an excess of wine stopped and held still. “Fire! There is a fire!” another voice shouted. Then a roar went up and guests began scrambling for the great doors at the front of the hall.

Shakespeare did not hesitate. He seized Drake by the arm and pressed his hand into Lady Elizabeth’s back. “Come with me. I know a better way out. This fire will have been laid by the killer. He will make his attempt in the confusion …”

A rush of flame took hold of a gold-and-red French tapestry that hung from a wall. Fire leapt from it into the drapes and up to the beams. Black smoke billowed in the narrow confines of the hall. The scramble of bodies toward the door turned to panic. Women and men coughed and screamed and pushed and trampled.

Drake pushed Shakespeare’s hand away from his arm. He grabbed a silver salver from the table and banged it hard repeatedly. “Hear me! Hear me!” he shouted. “Gentlemen stand aside and let the ladies go first. With some order, we will all get out safely. Hear me!”

Suddenly the undisciplined charge for the doorway halted. Even in the most intense heat of fire, men obeyed Sir Francis Drake. Most men did stand aside and those few that didn’t were hauled out of the queue by others. The women then proceeded to exit at a brisk pace.

The fire was growing fast, gobbling up paintings and furnishings, setting light to the beams in the ceiling. Cooks and serving maids began running in with pails of water. Shakespeare realized a few pails was not going to be enough. This was going to be a hard blaze to bring under control. Boltfoot and Diego had emerged from the crush of people and were now back with Shakespeare and the Drakes.

“We really must go, Sir Francis.”

“Mr. Shakespeare, we are in your hands. Kindly take us your secret way.”

They moved forward. Shakespeare suddenly realized the way he had intended, through the kitchens, was blocked by flames. He turned to the west side of the building, to the corporation’s council chamber. There had to be a way through there. The smoke was getting worse; sounds of coughing and choking filled the hall as the fire raged out of control. As soon as they were in the chamber, Shakespeare slammed the door behind them to keep out the flames and the worst of the fumes. They stood a moment, catching their breath, trying to clear their lungs. The faces of eminent Plymouth burghers looked down on them from portraits around the walls.