Shakespeare's Rebel (2 page)

He was echoed from his own boat and from those nearby. Theirs surged ahead, at the boatswain’s speeded cry, the drummer’s increased beat. Silver, flopping down again beside John, leaned in. ‘Ah, Lawley,’ he said, ‘you may fool some with your veteran’s ennui.’ He mimed a yawn. ‘But I know different. Know that you are as ardent for glory as any man here.’

‘I am ardent for gold,’ John grunted, ‘and the pickings of the sack of Cadiz could be rich indeed. Now let me sleep.’ Closing his eyes again, he wondered if Silver was right. What were these twitchings about his heart? There was only one other place he’d had similar feelings – in a theatre with a new play to give and too swiftly conned lines to speak. Yet this, of battle? It had been eight years since he’d last drawn a sword in more than playhouse anger. Different commander, same enemy, the one he’d fought near all his life and across this wide globe.

Spaniards, he thought, taking a breath. There is always something about fighting Spaniards.

A concerned cry opened his eyes. Their vessel, which had drawn initially ahead, was starting to fail. They had fewer men at oar than some of the others, carrying Essex’s close companions as they did, and some of those oarsmen were flagging now. John knew that Robert needed to be first ashore, first to the gates, first through them; that he cared little about plunder though he was probably more debt-ridden than any. All he wanted was the glory – and Queen Elizabeth’s hand tugging his red curls, calling him once again her ‘sweet Robin’.

He saw the earl’s shoulders droop – from their first meeting ten years before, John knew the young man to be prone to a sudden melancholy that could be brought on by just such a reverse. ‘To oar, lads!’ he cried, seizing the one from the puffing sailor beside him. ‘Let we yeomen of England disdain nothing in giving our lord his first triumph.’

The cry was taken up, the challenge. Essex himself dropped down to grasp oak. After an initial slip of momentum as one man replaced another, the oars dipped again, the vessel surged. They may not have been sailors, but the Bay of Cadiz was calm and the trick one they had all learned before.

The boat grounded, the man at the prow launching himself with the sudden stop. Water lapped his boot tops but did not halt him. Five strides and he was on dry sand. And for a moment, Robert Devereux, Earl Marshal of England, had sole possession of that foreign shore.

‘Cry God for her majesty!’ he shouted.

But another name was on the lips of those who spilled over gunnels to follow him.

‘My lord of Essex!’

The haypenny bed, Wapping. 1599

‘Will ya stop kickin’ me, varlet?’ the voice said. ‘Me shins are already as black as a negro’s bollocks.’

‘Sure now, give him blow for blow,’ a second voice suggested, before lowering to a whisper. ‘Or have you sought other recompense in his purse?’

John did not try to open his eyes. They were still stickily shut beneath his forearm. Besides, he wasn’t disturbed by the question. He already knew the answer – the one the first man gave now.

‘’Tis as barren as my da’s fields these last three summers. So if he kicks me one more time, or tries again to steal back his cloak – the least he owes me, mind, for the night he’s given me! – I’ll pay him with that blow. You’ll see.’

John ceased writhing. He didn’t want rousing just yet from his reverie of warmth. Especially as he had just come to the part where it had all gone so well.

Until it hadn’t.

‘What’s he moaning about now?’ the other man asked. ‘Is that Spanish? He’s dark enough for a dago, ain’t he? A pox on him if he is. I’ll join you in giving the dog a beating, you can be sure.’

You’ll be one of a crowd, thought John, drifting back . . .

Cadiz. 1596

It had been too easy. The unopposed landing, the three-mile march on soft sand to the plain before the city gates. Five hundred mounted dons had attacked an advance party sent for the very purpose of luring them on, bait for a trap, duly sprung. At Essex’s command, the main body had erupted from their concealment, pincering the Spanish. A volley from musket and pistol and the proudest hidalgo fled, pursued by Englishmen shrieking like fiends. The defenders had shut the gates so fast, half their number were trapped outside. Yet rather than surrender there, or, more likely, be slaughtered by the charging enemy, they had shown that enemy the swiftest way into their city – through walls under repair, scaffolding up against it and holes still full of tools.

‘On! On!’ screamed Essex, red-stained sword aloft and running at the widest hole, through which a cloak, emblazoned with the Star of Seville, had just disappeared. Yet even as he reached the gap, its edges exploded, mortar blasted out by shot, fragments of stone and metal whining off his breastplate and helm. To the horror of all, the earl fell, but immediately scuttled to the hole’s side, joined there in moments by his closest companions.

John was among the first. ‘How fares my lord?’ he said, reaching out to the blood that daubed the tangerine sash.

Essex glanced down. ‘Not mine, I think,’ he said, brushing aside the reaching hand. ‘Or if it is, it’s mingled with a few others.’ He laughed. ‘God a mercy, John, that was a good first roll of die. But what’s within?’ He jerked his head at the hole. ‘Can we storm this, think you?’

John thrust his head into the gap, noted the inner wall that faced this outer one, saw flintlock flashes there, withdrew just before bullets nipped the masonry. ‘A wall defensible about fifty paces off and a killing ground before it,’ he said. ‘Hard to tell the numbers. Not many, I’d hazard, since they chose to relinquish this wall’ – he slapped the one they sheltered behind – ‘to defend that. Still, enough to pin us here, for we can only go through this gap two at a time. If we wait for numbers . . .’

But Essex had stopped listening. ‘You’d hazard and so would I, Johnnie. All we need is to buy a moment.’ More of his advance guard were arriving, weaving to avoid the fire of snipers in the turrets. Some of these newcomers bore muskets, others grapple and rope. ‘Silver?’

The swordsman slid across. ‘My lord?’

‘Take you these dozen musketeers to the scaffold above. Tell me when they are primed.’

‘My lord.’

While he scrambled up, followed by his men, Essex took out a pistol. ‘Load all. When Silver calls, be ready to move.’

‘My . . . my lord, a word.’ The tremulous voice that came was that of the earl’s steward, Gelli Meyrick. On a nod, the man continued, his Welsh tones heightened by the strain. ‘You have oft asked me, look you, that I counsel you when . . . when impatience rules your honour. Even at the risk of your displeasure’ – he swallowed – ‘I so counsel now.’ He pointed back the way they’d come, across the valley dotted with the bodies of Spanish cavalrymen and riderless mounts, to the slight rise beyond where forces were mustering. ‘I see my lord of Effingham’s standard there. He brings the main body. If we were to wait, look you . . .’

‘Wait?’ roared Essex. ‘Is that your counsel? Wait for my lord Charles to march up and steal my glory? I piss on him and any waiting.’ He finished loading the pistol, snapped its steel down, thrust it into his cross belt, began loading another. ‘What say you, Master Lawley?’

John looked up from his own loading and into the younger man’s eyes. They were maddened, within the streakings of black powder. Yet somewhere in the heart of them was also the misgiving Essex ever had. He gave every man’s doubts an ear and could be swayed by them. Or woman’s – a queen’s slight would send him to his bedroom for a month. But John also knew this well enough: Essex would rather be dead than cede an ounce of glory to any other.

John glanced around at the other men, clutching pistols, hefting swords. While blood was up, they may as well act. First glory – if they survived – but first pickings too in a town as rich as Cadiz. His share would solve a lot of problems back home. Rich enough, it might even persuade Tess to marry him. ‘I am game if you are, good my lord.’

‘I am. Oh, I am!’ Essex looked around at other expectant faces. ‘And you, stout hearts? Are you with us?’

‘Aye,’ came the shout.

Pistols loaded, armour adjusted, a man, one Robert Catesby, leaned forward. ‘Master Lawley, I heard a strange rumour of you: that you are, as well as a famed warrior, a player of some note. Is it true? Have you strutted the platforms of England?’

Plus a few on the Continent, thought John. But it did not feel like the right moment to detail his curriculum vitae. So he simply nodded and said, ‘I have.’

‘Well, sir, in my experience of ’em – and I am particularly fond of Edward Alleyn’s performances at the Rose.’ John rolled his eyes. ‘Well, sir, could you not give us some speech of fire from the repertoire. Some warrior’s words to see us through the wall and among the enemy? Tamburlaine’s, perhaps? Or even our majesty’s illustrious grandfather and his words at Bosworth?’

Marlowe or Shakespeare? John thought. He had played them both, of course. He had his loyalty to the brother of his soul, William, and his preference. Yet truly, he cared little for recitation unless there was coin in it. So now he glanced at Essex, just finishing the loading of his last pistol. With his red beard stained with black powder, someone else’s blood on his cheek and a dancing light in his eye, he looked like the youth John had first met ten years before.

John leaned forward. ‘Nay, lads, why hearken to some false and foreign hero from the playhouse when you have a true and native one before you? And when our commander writes verse as inspiring as any?’

Essex shrugged, entirely failing to look modest. ‘Aye, good my lord’ and ‘We pray you, do’ rang out.

The earl looked slowly around, then nodded. ‘Then see here,’ he said, rising to one knee and drawing his sword. ‘This weapon that I carry is the very one carried beside me into battle ten years since by my brother in arms, the brother of my heart, Sir Philip Sidney.’ A sigh came. ‘That was a day, Master Lawley, was it not?’

It was not the hour for memory but for myth, so John simply gave the nod required and the earl continued. ‘At Zutphen in the Netherlands it was, and three thousand Spaniards marching to relieve the town while I . . . I had but three hundred mounted Englishmen to stop them. Yet I did not hesitate. With Sir Philip on my right arm, and John Lawley on my left, three times we charged, and rallied, and charged again.’ He paused, and his eyes filled. ‘Yet on that final charge, his blade becrimsoned in foemen’s blood, my brother took the musket ball that gave him his quietus.’

He looked around at all the faces, those nearest, those others who’d drawn nearer as he spoke, and raised his voice to reach them. ‘He died in my arms two weeks later. He gave me this sword ere he did, and these words: “Never draw it without reason nor sheathe it without honour.” ’ He nodded. ‘I never have and I never will. And I will not on this day.’ He focused on one man. ‘So do not counsel that we wait for others, Gelli Meyrick. Do not seek fellow travellers on the path to glory. They will only get in our way.’ He looked around the circle. ‘This honour, and England’s glory, belongs only to us,’ he added, and holding the sword by the blade, he raised it up before him like a crucifix.

Men reached out and placed their hands upon it, as if it were indeed the true cross. John only hesitated a moment, remembering well where that particular path of glory had led – to Philip Sidney’s tent, and the foul-sweet stench of gangrene as the poet-warrior died. Yet Essex had not only inherited the sword, he had inherited the mantle of the dead hero. Men would follow it, like a banner. Follow him.

A voice from above. ‘All’s ready here, my lord,’ George Silver called.

Essex stood, lifting the sword high. ‘For honour! For England! For St George!’ he cried.

‘Honour! England! St George!’ came the shout from two score throats.

Smiling, Essex tipped his head back and shouted up, ‘Fire!’ drew one of his pistols, half cocked it. John did the same, readying himself.

Above, the musketeers laid their weapons on the ramparts; a ragged volley was discharged. ‘Now, Goodman John?’

‘Now, my lord.’

Both men went to full cock. At a nod, they thrust their pistols through the hole, pulled their triggers. Then, through the gunsmoke and side by side, they entered the city of Cadiz.

The two who followed them died, Spanish gunmen rising from the crouch. But more Englishmen charged through, while others swung down on ropes from above. Briefly it was backswords and bucklers against rapiers and pike. Some of the enemy fought bravely. Most broke and fled down the narrow streets that gave on to the wall.

‘Follow! Halloo! Halloo!’ cried Essex, giving the hunter’s call. Somewhere a bugle echoed him – Lord Howard, Raleigh and the rest of the English army approaching fast. The chase was on along the path, and glory was the prize.

The haypenny bed, Wapping. 1599

‘There’s something hard diggin’ into me.’

‘I thought he was too sottish for that. Foul bastard!’

‘Not in his breeches, ya simpleton. Higher up, about his chest.’

‘Dagger?’

‘Too small. Feels like . . . like a locket, mayhap.’

‘A locket?’ Fingers rasped on an unshaven jaw. ‘Let’s have it out. Perhaps it’ll fetch enough to pay us for this wretch’s thrashing that so marred our sleep.’

‘Do you stand by with your cudgel then, though I doubt he’ll stir. I’ll delve. Christ’s guts, but don’t he stink?’

John heard the words, felt the fingers questing for the locket Tess had given him on a happier day. He should have sold it three days since, bought one last bottle of the water of life. Was her cruelty not the reason for the debauch, after all? Should she not share the cost? And yet he’d found he could not.

It would take a better picker than this oaf to pull the jewel from him. So he had some moments to linger still, where the land was warm, and the cause clear.

Cadiz. 1596

They’d pushed too far, of course. Blood in their ears, its taint in their nostrils, fleeing backs, feeble stands brushed aside. They’d chased as far as the town’s central square, where someone had rallied the last of the defence. Too few, too late for the English army, whose bugles were sounding even then from the town’s main gate. Too many for Essex’s band, down to twenty, dwindled now by casualties and those who’d slunk off to loot.