Traitor (30 page)

‘So we won’t steal it – just use stolen money? That will make it legal and moral, will it?’

‘It will, yes. You’re learning fast, Andrew Woode. Now let’s have a better look at your ear.’

Roughly, she pushed his head down to examine his injury, then proclaimed him sound.

‘Would he have killed me?’

‘Spindle? I don’t know. He’s a strange one. Does pretty much what Reaphook tells him. He might just have been trying to raise a laugh by making you piss yourself.’

Below them, in the vale, they heard a distant sound, carried on the warm air: the beat of a single drum. They raised their heads and gazed down. In the west, coming in their direction, they saw a column of men, perhaps twenty or thirty, marching slowly through the valley.

‘Who are they?’

‘Soldiers.’

‘Are they the ones that attacked us?’

‘No, those were townsfolk and villagers. These are soldiers, pressing men for the war. I heard they been around here a couple of days. Steer clear of them, Andrew. No good can come of them.’

As the column of soldiers passed by, their eyes turned right in the direction of Andrew and Ursula.

‘They’re looking at us. Should we run?’

‘They’re looking at the pigging white horse, you fool.’

He laughed. Of course they were. The giant chalk white horse carved into the grassy hillside where they lay.

Joshua Peace walked disconsolately towards the stables where his horse was liveried. His doublet hung from his shoulders in tatters where Attorney Hesketh’s boy had cut its seams. He felt defeated; he had failed his friend John Shakespeare. There was nothing left for him here now; he had little gold left in his purse and no possessions apart from his mare.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned. It was the curious woman from the corner of the earl’s chamber. She seemed agitated, her hair awry.

‘Mistress Knott—’

‘Come with me, quickly, before we are seen together.’

Peace hesitated but she tugged at his sleeve and pulled him.

‘What do you want of me?’ he asked.

‘You are a friend of Mr Shakespeare’s?’

He nodded.

‘Then say nothing, just come with me. You will see.’

They walked out of Ormskirk, south and west, for two or more hours, deep into the countryside, until the sun was high in the sky. They came to a wood and the woman stopped. She looked at Peace questioningly, as though doubt had suddenly seized her.

‘Are you a man of God, Mr Peace?’

Was he? Perhaps not in the way she meant it. He said nothing.

‘This is Sceptre Wood. There is darkness here. Turn away now if you wish.’

He shook his head. He had come this far; he would go on.

At first the wood was dappled and light, with well-spaced oak and ash, but then it became more dense and overgrown, thick with broken, dead trees and briar.

She stopped and lifted her chin, pointing ahead with her face.

He tried to see what she was looking at. They were at the edge of a clearing. And then he saw it, hidden in a tangle of sticks and vines and leaves. A squat cabin or shelter, built of branches and mud, and so constructed that it was part of the very forest itself.

Mistress Knott pushed him forward. ‘Go in,’ she said. ‘You are expected.’

‘No, you go first.’

‘I cannot go in. It is an ungodly place.’

Joshua Peace wished more than anything to turn and run, but he was as rooted to this course of action as the trees that
surrounded him. He stepped forward. There was no door to the cabin, just a gaping entranceway, with a step that went down into the earth.

A grey-haired woman was sitting on her haunches. She was thin and bent and her face was lined. Their eyes met. She smiled.

‘Welcome, master, welcome,’ she said, her voice as thin as her small, sunken frame.

He looked away from her and surveyed the interior of the shelter. There were earthenware pots and glass vials all around. She followed his eyes.

‘I have love philtres and charms, remedies for the ague and pox and a hundred other ailments. I can rid you of the stone or the gout or turn a falling prick to oak. Tell me what you wish, master.’

‘I was told you were expecting me. Mistress Knott …’

As he said the name, he looked closer at the old woman. Though she was very different, though she exuded malevolence, yet he could see clearly now: she was Mistress Knott’s kin. No, more than that; she was her mother.

‘Indeed, yes indeed. I have the very thing. I gave it to one who came before you, but you shall have it, too.’

She laughed, an unearthly sound like birdsong in water, then began scraping at the earth close to her feet.

Peace watched her in ghastly fascination. Her quill-thin fingers scratched at the mud until they clasped something about the size of a large pebble. Then he saw that it was a glass vial. She rubbed it against her long black skirts to clear away the earth, then offered it to him. He touched it and tried to discern its contents. There seemed to be something dry and dull-coloured, grey or brown, in the little bottle.

He tried to take it but she snatched it back and held it to her breast.

‘Two marks. I want two marks. The one who came before gave me a sovereign.’

Peace knew he had no more than ten shillings in his purse. It was all he had to get him back to London. He shook his head.

‘I do not have it.’

‘Then give me your knife and a lock of your hair.’

Every part of him told him this was superstitious nonsense, yet he was fearful. What would she
do
with his hair? More powerful yet was the sense of duty he still felt he owed to John Shakespeare. He took the knife from his belt and cut a lock from the thin ridge of hair that was all that remained encircling his pate. He handed the hair and the knife to the woman. She placed the vial in his hand.

He took out the little wooden stopper and put his nose close to the opening. He immediately caught the faint whiff of rose petals and went cold …

Parfitt knocked at the door to Thomas Hesketh’s room and went in. His master was there, with the slender young man from London.

‘Well, Parfitt,’ Hesketh said. ‘Did she take him to the old woman in the woods?’

‘She did, master.’

Hesketh turned to his guest. ‘Then we must act, Mr Ickman.’

‘Indeed,’ Bartholomew Ickman said. ‘It is time to tie up the loose ends of this entanglement.’

I
N THE EARLY
evening, soon after beginning his third – and yet wider – circuit of Oxford, Shakespeare came to a village alehouse a few miles west of the city. He handed his hired bay mare to a sullen ostler and told him to feed it well with oats, water it and wash it down.

The taproom smelt of sweat, smoke, ale and farmyard manure. He ordered food and settled into a corner booth to rest an hour. The food was poorly seasoned and the beer was indifferent, yet he barely noticed. His mind was elsewhere. After eating and paying, he spoke with the landlord, asking him the same questions he had asked all day. The words tripped from his tongue by rote.

The landlord was curt. ‘Got more than enough fugitives in these parts without your boy. Vagabonds and rogues. They been around here for weeks, thieving. No house is safe while they are about.’

‘Where are they?’

‘They had their camp in the woods around an old cowhouse four miles from here, towards Faringdon. Three of their women came into this village one day, begging, trying to sell wildflower posies for farthings and clutching babes that they said would die without food. Well, I gave them horsebread and some oats and told them to clear off. When they had gone, a
bridle from my stables was missing, the devil damn their dirty hides. What’s more, the washing from Mistress Crispin’s line had been filched. No guessing where that all went. But with luck they’ll have gone for good now, with broken bones and cracked skulls to speed them on their way.’

‘Tell me more.’

The landlord scratched his balls, then belched. ‘Some farmers and their men were getting an armed band together against them, to drive them off. I’d go further than that, though. Hang them all, every last vagabond in the land, I say. Why don’t Her Majesty the Queen take care of these enemies at home rather than fighting her foreign wars in Belgia and Brittany? Get the militias in against them …’

Shakespeare listened to the grumbling and managed to get a clearer idea of where to find the vagabonds’ camp. He considered the hour. It was getting late and he was tired from riding all day. Still, he wanted to see this camp.

The ride took him an hour over fields and lanes. The only people he saw were farmworkers in their smocks, trudging homeward with the tools of their trade. He was in a hurry, but still he stopped and spoke with each one he saw, both to ask whether they had seen a boy like Andrew and also to ask if he was on the right route to the vagabond encampment.

The sun was dipping low when he arrived. He found a desolate, ghostly place. He tethered the mare and walked about. It had clearly been occupied recently, for the earth was either muddy or scuffed by many feet. An old cowhouse had been broken apart and burnt to the ground. Spirals of smoke ascended from charred rafters. Yes, people had been here recently, that was certain. But it was deserted now. The farmers and their men had done their work well in sending this lot of vagabonds on their way.

Wandering into the woods, he found evidence of small
campfires and beaten-down ferns where people might have slept. There were a few abandoned belongings – a cup, a child’s carved doll – but no sign of Andrew.

Exhausted, Shakespeare built a bed of ferns and lay down, close to the horse. There was nothing for him here. Sleep came instantly.

‘We cannot fail in this, Sir Thomas. The Spaniard must not be allowed to seize Brest. Does Her Majesty understand that?’

It was late evening. They were in Sir Robert Cecil’s private rooms.

Heneage nodded his handsome head. ‘I think she does understand now. Norreys has been persuasive. She will give him the men she needs. About time, too.’

‘Indeed. And no risk of Essex taking over command …’

‘No, thank the Lord. We need a soldier, not a peafowl.’

There had been rumours around court that the Earl of Essex would replace Norreys in command of the English army in Brittany for the final push to secure Morlaix and the Fort of El Léon on the Crozon peninsula. It had been a moment of panic for the Cecils and their allies, but Elizabeth was having none of Essex. Too much was at stake in Brittany. Essex had failed in Normandy; she needed a successful, battle-hardened general for this operation. That man was Sir John Norreys.

Cecil had sighed with relief at the news, but his comfort was short-lived. The truth was that Norreys and his army could do only so much. The two men in this small, cool room, away from the hubbub and listening ears of court, knew that there was more to this battle than a good general and an adequate complement of men. Their reports on the fortress of El Léon suggested it was all but impregnable.

Cecil handed a paper to Heneage. ‘This arrived within the hour. It is a letter from John Shakespeare.’

Heneage read it quickly and looked up at Cecil in dismay. ‘God’s blood, the man has midsummer madness.’

‘I rather fear so. What do you suggest?’

‘Well, it is certain that we need him for this operation. We are agreed on that. A great deal of work has already gone into preparing his path. It would be impossible to replace him at such a late stage.’

Cecil nodded. More than that, Shakespeare had the guile, the skill, the courage and the command of Spanish required. Most importantly of all, he had a huge working knowledge of England’s intelligence network. No, there was no other man.

‘You must send a squadron of men to Oxford,’ Heneage continued. ‘Bring him back, by force if necessary.’

‘We need his cooperation, not his enmity. Everything I know about him tells me that he would not comply if we did such a thing. He will put his family first. That was how he came to part company with Mr Secretary Walsingham.’

‘Can we not threaten him?’

‘With what? No court would consider it a felony to refuse to undertake such a mission. He is not subject to military law.’

On the far side of the table, there was a soft clearing of the throat. Both men looked across at Lady Eliska.

‘If I may say something, gentlemen …’

‘My lady?’

She held up the letter. ‘I do believe that you are both looking at this from the wrong angle. In my opinion, the letter from Mr Shakespeare is most opportune. Used with subtlety, it might just help us to persuade Mr Shakespeare to play his part with great willing.’

Cecil smiled. ‘I think I begin to understand.’

‘The missing boy should not be seen as a bar to our plans,’ Eliska said, ‘but as the key to securing his father’s cooperation.’

Shakespeare rose at dawn, wakened by an earwig crawling across his nose. He looked around once more, just to be certain there was nothing more to be learnt, then untethered the horse and rode back towards the village to resume his meticulous quest.

Just before the first house, he stopped beside a man of middle years and began questioning him.

The man put up his hand to interrupt. ‘I
heard
there was someone around asking questions.’ His tone was gruff and he was clearly accustomed to being heard and obeyed. ‘Who are you?’

‘My name is John Shakespeare. I am a government officer, looking for a boy, a scholar, who has gone missing from his Oxford college.’

‘That’s what I heard. Tell me more.’

Shakespeare described Andrew in detail.

‘Why?’ he said eventually. ‘Have you seen or heard of such a boy?’

‘There would be some money in it if I had, wouldn’t there? A scholar boy on the run, there’d be gold in that, I reckon.’

‘It is possible.’

‘He’d be worth gold to others, too, then. Reward money for bringing a fugitive to justice.’

Shakespeare rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. The man had the satisfied, well-fed look of a yeoman farmer. But more than that, he had, too, the brutish eyes of an employer who habitually drove his workmen hard and drove commercial deals harder.