Shakespeare's Rebel (12 page)

The stable was empty, its straw unoccupied and a vision of paradise. John stepped through the doorway into the garden. Above, cutting through the music, he heard Essex’s distinct bellow, calling for more wine.

The light spill was not enough to easily find his weapon. Touch brought him close when he pricked his finger on a rose thorn. He swept his hand to the left. Nothing. Odd. He moved it right, until another prick halted his progress. Surely no one had come and taken it? Perhaps it had fallen? He knelt, gravel digging into his knees, and felt amongst the winter-bare shrubs. He encountered nothing but dirt. Murmuring with exasperation, he reached further . . . and then someone spoke.

‘Looking for this?’

For long seconds he was frozen in the darkness. Then the gate on a lantern was opened, its single candle still a dazzle in the dark. Blinking against it, he saw his sword. It was lying across a lap within the arbor. Yet John did not reach for it, for the lap it lay across was Sir Robert Cecil’s – and from the way he caressed the leather, it did not look like the Secretary of State was keen to part with it.

IX

Spider and Web

He sat within the woven ash frame – what is it, thought John despairingly, with men of power tonight and this particular arbor? Though it was better proportioned to its newer occupant than its former. Where Essex had sprawled, Cecil sat comfortable on the little bench, being head and shoulders smaller than the earl – except, actually, in the shoulder, where Cecil exceeded on one side, sporting a hump near as big as the one Burbage had worn in the role of the ‘bunch-backed toad’, Richard the Third. Yet the small man was arachnid, not amphibian, sitting now as if in the centre of a web – with John feeling like a trapped fly. In the jungles of Darien, he had seen trencher-sized spiders, seen men die of their bites. Many shared colouring with the man before him now – reddish-tinged hair peeking from under his beaver fur bonnet, visible again in his trimmed, tapered beard. There was nothing ostentatious in his clothes, all from doublet to breeches was, like the hat, of soberest black, the uniform of the Puritan, if all well cut. The only distinguishing item was a mandillion, the half-cloak trying, and failing, to conceal the excess of shoulder.

He did not wish to approach – but he had to. ‘I thank you for finding it, sir,’ he said. ‘May I . . . ?’

He gestured, and Cecil gave a tiny nod. ‘Of course.’ He did not reach the sword out, however, kept it on his lap. Swallowing, John took a step forward – and became aware of twin shapes the other side of the arbor, leaning closer. Candlelight reflected off metal, the breastplates of the Secretary’s guards. Though he could not see them closely, he was aware of a certain dark immensity.

In range now he bent, keeping his movements slow and unalarming. When he had one hand upon the scabbard, between the other’s two, he was close enough so that Cecil only had to whisper, ‘Do you know me?’

‘No, Sir Ro—’ He bit his tongue. ‘No, sir. If I may . . .’ He pulled a little harder, to no avail.

‘Strange. For I know you, John Lawley.’

Great turds
, thought John clearly, even as the whisky headache that he had been holding off all day with ale and action descended with full force.

‘Though we have not had the pleasure of meeting before, I warrant I know more about you than . . . almost anyone.’ He smiled fractionally. ‘Come now, sir, I believe you must indeed know me.’

John released the sword, unbent. His first strategy, of ignorance and speedy retreat, had been thwarted. ‘I apologise I did not recognise you straightway, Sir Robert. It has been’ – he sighed – ‘a long day.’

‘A string of them, or so I am told. But come.’ Cecil rose, stood staring up from John’s mid chest. ‘Let us find somewhere more comfortable to continue our conversation.’

‘Master Secretary, I am expected . . .’

‘Oh yes, the players. Your son among them, is that not true? Nay, do not be surprised. I noticed the name of Lawley in the list of players that was presented to the Master of the Revels. We like to know who comes into the palace. So many threats against her majesty these days. I did not see your name, however.’ He smiled again, as mirthlessly. ‘Oh, on plenty of other papers to be sure. Not that one, though.’ He stepped away. ‘Do come. It is chill in this garden and I can offer you something within that will warm you.’

The Secretary was already proceeding down the path towards the palace itself. There was no question of not following, not when the two shadows stepped from the arbor’s side and revealed themselves to be two very large guards, looming over him as he had over Cecil. ‘Delighted,’ he said, his mouth suddenly desert dry. He would even have drunk some of Tess’s rainwater. Wondering if he’d ever be offered that chance again, he followed.

He had never been inside Whitehall before. But experience had taught him that nastier things happened on a palace’s lower levels, so he was relieved to be climbing stairs, not descending them. The party passed close above the banqueting hall, from which the sound of a guitar could be heard playing some lament by William Byrd, an interlude while the dancers caught their breath. Plucked strings faded as they took yet more stairs, a half-dozen ill-lit corridors, a last, long one ending at a plain oaken door. It opened silently at their approach, the Secretary scuttling forward to lay the sword atop a vast walnut-wood table, awash with papers. The room was unornamented, save for an arras occupying one side wall, a hunting scene upon it, and a single portrait. John stared at that, while the two guards settled either side of the closed door, and Cecil into the chair behind the desk. ‘Do you know who that is?’ he asked, noting the direction of John’s regard.

John considered. What was he there for? Sir Robert Cecil, as Secretary of State, was the most powerful man in the realm. He controlled the Privy Council; largely consisting of his appointees, he could sway them into doing nearly all that he desired – including dealing, in whatever way he chose, with a lowly soldier and sometime player. Yet what could he do now but play out the scene – and at least readily answer the easy questions. ‘It is your father. Lord Burleigh.’

‘My father, yes. Died only last year, may his soul rest in peace. Though of course it does, seeing as how he was such a devout Protestant. None of that Papist purgatory for him.’ He nodded to the portrait. ‘Did you ever know him?’

‘I . . . I did have the honour of meeting him a couple of years ago.’

‘Meeting?’ Cecil gave his snort of a laugh. ‘He interrogated you.’

John shrugged. ‘Interrogate is such a . . . laden word, do you not think, sir? Your father and I
conversed
.’

‘You did.’ Cecil picked a roll of parchment from off his desk. ‘For three weeks. In the Tower. Quite the . . . conversation. Ah!’ A glass was placed on the desk and a larger pewter mug carried forward to John by the bald scribe who’d opened the door and who now swiftly retired to a small table in the shadows. There the man dipped a quill and waited. Cecil pledged John. ‘To further . . . interesting conversations.’

As John raised the brimming pot to his lips, he inhaled. Sack, he thought. The sweet wine from Spain was not whisky; but it was far stronger than any ale John had used to gradually climb out of oblivion. It was the way of the martin drunkard, the method tested over many years, ending the debauch with a few days on ever weaker beer until he was himself again; sack, its strength, could upset the plan. Even a few sips would weaken him – and he could not be weak here, not with this man. So even though his mouth was as ash, and the drummer in his head urged him on, he did not sip, only pretended to, raising the mug to his lips, then lowering it to his side, tipping some liquid down his breeches. Apologies, Gus, he thought. I’ll find a pregnant woman to give me her urine and clean Don Pedro’s costume for you myself. If I am able.

Cecil sank back into his chair. ‘On what shall we converse? No, it was not truly a question, Master Lawley. I know what we’ll talk about. Or rather of whom.’ He stared keenly. ‘But first you will indulge me.’ He found a pair of spectacles without really looking for them, slipped them on, lifted paper, read for a few moments in silence. ‘A strange life you have had, sir. I wonder that your friend Shakespeare has not put you upon the stage.’

Here we go, thought John, as the Secretary continued. ‘Strange from its very first moments, was it not? From conception. For Lawley is not your true surname, is it?’

‘Thomas Lawley is the only father I have ever known.’

‘Thomas Lawley the Jesuit.’

‘The former Jesuit, sir. He gave up that allegiance for love.’

‘For the love of your mother, who had already been
loved
by’ – Cecil squinted – ‘well, an unpronounceable name. A savage anyway, from a tribe of savages.’ He looked up. ‘Does that explain your extraordinary capacity for violence, I wonder?’ He indicated the papers. ‘For these are filled with tales of
your
savagery, sir.’

John took a breath, then exhaled slowly. ‘I think you will discover, sir, should you be put to it, that in the heat of the fight, we are each one of us born savages.’

It was said with all politeness. Yet it was still a hit, for the dwarfish Cecil was not shaped for war or any of its training games – a fact that his rival, and champion jouster, Essex never failed to point out, loudly and in company. The Secretary scowled, looked down again, seeking . . . what next? John wondered. During that ‘conversation’ with this man’s father, he had said many things he could now not remember. The elder Burleigh, for all his so-called Puritanism, had also been a convivial fellow and had succeeded in getting John drunk on several occasions. Anything could have spilled out and no doubt had. He would not otherwise have talked about his origins, the English not caring much for immigrants, as the regular riots against them showed. So he did not think about them, unless forced. Or as now, when a spymaster pored over his recorded words and he needed to defend himself against incrimination.

His father. His blood. Savage? Perhaps. But his mother, Anne, had spoken of a good man and extraordinary warrior who had given his life to save his tribe – the Tahontaenrat, People of the White-Tailed Deer, they were called – in that land across the Atlantic that the French were calling Canada. Anne had even taught him some of his father’s tongue, which he could yet speak to startle companions in a tavern. The skill had landed him in trouble – most famously when he’d uttered a few phrases in a Falmouth alehouse that the pirate Drake had overheard. He had then promptly kidnapped John to be his interpreter to the tribes he hoped to encounter across the great water. In the near three years of that voyage, John had not used the skill once but he’d learned plenty of others – some of them no doubt recorded in ink on the papers before him.

‘What a colourful life,’ Cecil said, as if giving echo to John’s thoughts. ‘Part of Drake’s voyage around the globe. Then you fought with him against the Great Armada.’

Because that Devonian cur kidnapped me for a second time, John thought but did not say.

Cecil turned a page. ‘Indeed, wherever there is conflict, there may you be found. You have fought all of England’s wars and a few others besides. You are reputed to be gifted with this’ – he tapped the sword on his desk – ‘as few men living. You studied the arts in Italy and in France, did you not?’

John nodded. A restless time after his return with Drake and the theatres closed by plague. He’d gone for a season – and stayed away three years. It was written down before the man and so undeniable.

‘Well, sir. Most men reading this would come to one of two conclusions. Either you are a worse liar than Mandeville . . . or you are a spy.’ Cecil looked up. ‘I believe this story is too incredible to be untrue. Thus I must conclude that you are the latter.’ He leaned forward. ‘Are you?’

On occasion, John thought, but answered, ‘Your father asked me the same question. I gave him the same answer. I am no spy.’

‘Ah, yes. Your’ – he smiled thinly as he pored among his papers – ‘conversation with my father.’ He lifted a sheet. ‘You, ah, discussed your recent imprisonment in Spain. And how you were freed from it in order to return home . . . to kill the Queen.’

John lifted the mug, pretended another sip, breathed. This was dangerous ground, now as then. He lowered the mug, spilled a little more. ‘No doubt you also can read there, sir, that I straightway reported the purpose for which the Spanish freed me, why I acceded to it to gain that freedom – and then spent three months in the Tower for my honesty. It is why your father wanted to interview me in person.’

‘Yes. One of my father’s last interviews in fact, alas,’ he said, without a trace of sorrow. ‘Well, I am sure it pleased him. In his dotage he was so easily amused.’ He looked up. ‘Are you a Catholic, then, that the Spanish could work on you?’

John hesitated. ‘I was raised in the Catholic tradition, as many were. I am not a Catholic.’

‘Raised but not. A little like your friend Shakespeare, hmm?’ He squinted over the frames and, when John did not reply, lifted another paper. ‘Indeed you do not seem much of anything. The last time we have a record of your parish – for you seem to come and go from records, sirrah, another tick in the tally of suspicion – you paid the recusant’s fine and attended service, not every Sunday as is commanded, but merely twice a year.’

He could not deny it – and did not see the purpose if he could have. The Master Secretary was, like most in government, a lawyer. John presumed he was building up his case. But the pounding in his skull made him impatient. ‘It is always salutary to hear one’s imperfections tallied,’ he said. ‘Something to reflect upon when next I am a-praying. But I fain would know the purpose of their recounting.’ He shook his head. ‘What is it that you want with me, Master Secretary?’

Cecil took off his glasses. ‘Want?’ he snapped. ‘Ask rather what I should do. For in these dangerous times, anyone looking at your record and your
associations
’ – he gave the word a distinct twist – ‘would think it safest to imprison you straightway.’