Shakespeare's Rebel (25 page)

‘A chair for her majesty,’ Cecil called.

‘And a pomander for the stench. Also some cordial,’ she added.

Orders were relayed, a line of servants curving round the tower’s stair no doubt, each bearing whatever might be required for the Queen’s comfort. A chair was brought, sweet herbs in their metal ball placed in one hand, a glass in the other. When the last servant left, Elizabeth sat, sipped then waved. ‘On, Sir Robert.’

The Secretary donned spectacles, then raised a parchment. Dangling from it was a tangerine ribbon at the base of which was an oval of sealing wax. ‘ “Most beauteous . . . ” ’ he began.

‘Dispense with the tributes, Master Secretary,’ Elizabeth snapped. ‘One can only hear so many odes to one’s eyes before they nauseate near as much as the air in this room. Since I have been pulled prematurely from the chase for this’ – she gestured to her habit – ‘you will to it, sir. The hart has been bayed. To the kill!’ She settled back with a slight smile for her metaphor.

Cecil gave a half-bow, then scanned down the tightly inked lines. It would be hard to discover the hart in those thickets, John knew. He had received letters from the earl himself and knew them to be full of rhetorical flourishes and devices obscuring the matter. Eventually, somewhere near the end of the second page, the Secretary flushed his prey. ‘ “Majesty,” ’ he announced, ‘ “as your viceroy in this land, we have used your power as deputed to us to force the Earl of Tyrone if not to his knees, then to his horse’s withers in water. For he paid to us, and through us, to you, due servility. With Lagan’s stream lapping at his mount’s belly, all hatless, did he most humbly accept terms. To wit: not to violate the peace of the realm for six weeks. Such terms to be renewed at six-week intervals, until either side gives a fortnight’s notice. To such peace the rebel swore binding oaths, while your vice-regent merely signed an assurance as befitted our status. Moreover . . . ” ’

Elizabeth’s legs had been writhing during Cecil’s recitation. Now they propelled her up. ‘The dastard!’ she cried. ‘He tries to make this out to be our victory. Ours! When it is clearly
his
defeat. Terms with a traitor! Not his head on a pike. Terms, by Jesu!’

John frowned. There were several things he did not understand. ‘Lagan’s waters, sir?’ he asked, addressing Cecil.

‘We have a letter here from a witness to this . . . treason.’ He glanced at the Queen as if seeking approval for the word, as she moved back and forth behind her chair. Unrebuked, he picked up another paper. ‘It appears that the earl, having failed to bring the rebels to battle, agreed to meet their leader between the armies . . . in a stream! It matters not that Tyrone was bonnetless in the waters and Devereux wore his helmet on the bank. For they were alone. Alone!’

Alone
. Very little surprised John when it came to Robert Devereux – but this did. He would have thought that the title of vice-regent would have put some sense into even that muddled head, but obviously it had not. To converse with an avowed rebel
unwitnessed
? Anything could have been said and agreed. Anything. And the earl was not only a general at the head of the Queen’s army, he was also a dog snapping around the only . . . the only bitch in the pack, John thought, glancing at the wandering Queen. Her Robin was the leader of a faction. To consort with traitors in this extraordinary way . . . it was as if a mastiff in a bear bait suddenly made compact with the bear. It could well be construed as treason – and he knew that the earl’s great rival, the Secretary, was construing it exactly that way.

Except now, cunning man that he was, he did the opposite. ‘Yet certainly the earl is valiant. His army has been much reduced by the bloody flux, which has struck officer and man and wasted even himself.’ He tutted, shook his head. ‘Perhaps this truce is for the best.’

‘The best?’ Elizabeth halted her pacing to screech. ‘The only thing he has wasted is the power I have bequeathed to him. The only thing he has wasted is my goodwill. My love . . .’ She broke off, choking on the word. She turned away for a moment, turned back. ‘This contemptible truce must be immediately repudiated. The Vice-Regent must resume the war and destroy Tyrone with the forces he now has. If he does not, before the winter makes the land impassable – though when is it truly not in a country where the rain it raineth every day? – then he is to take to winter quarters and await the spring and such reinforcements as we can send. Heed me!’ She stamped her foot, her voice rose, and she stooped till her face was a hand’s breadth from John’s. ‘And above all, this. You are not to return here, sir. At no instance are you to return to England, to my court. I forbid it! Forbid it, do you hear?’

Her voice had risen to a yell. She was staring hard into his eyes. And John could see in hers several things at once. The first, fury; then, close behind it, barely veiled by it, her desperation. Yet what made him lower his was that both were directed not to the man whose eyes she gazed into. She was looking at her sweet Robin himself.

‘Your Grace . . .’

It was the Secretary’s hesitant voice that pulled her fast upright. She flopped on to her chair, turned away, her forehead on one hand. A silence came, tense and awkward. Then Cecil spoke again. ‘You have heard Her Majesty’s commandments. They will be conveyed again in her own unmistakable hand and tone. Yet if he fails in all, disobeys all, dares to return . . .’

‘He must not. Will not.’ The Queen looked sharply up, all confusion gone from her eyes. ‘Not when I have ordered it so.’

Cecil turned, rubbing his hands before him. ‘Aye, majesty, but the earl is rash. Why, only last year Lord Grey prevented him drawing on you . . .’

John winced. The scandal had swept London, from court to abattoir. Rebuked, the earl had rudely turned his back on her. Furious, Elizabeth had boxed his ear. The earl had then shown an inch of steel and was narrowly constrained from showing more. They sang ballads about it from Brentford to Shadwell and no doubt the length of the realm. But he warranted the Queen was not often reminded of it.

Her reaction confirmed his thought. ‘You d-dare to . . .’ Elizabeth stuttered, half rising.

‘Only to recall to your majesty,’ Cecil continued, hastily, ‘his lordship’s extreme rashness. He may defy you again. He
may
return. Yet if, against commandments, he does’ – he took a breath, and directed the remainder as much to John as to his queen – ‘he must do so without his army.’

And there it was, at last, John knew: the heart of it, as Cecil now confirmed. ‘We do not want the people shouting “Bolingbroke”, as they do in this man’s playhouse,’ he concluded.

The name hung in the air, almost visible, like one of the tower’s martyred ghosts. John could have pointed out that the playhouse was hardly his; while the play that the character of Bolingbroke was from,
The Tragedy of Richard the Second
, was an old one, upwards of five years, and thus most unlikely to be played again because it would not draw an audience. In addition, the tale was based on the true one of a mighty subject, Henry Bolingbroke, usurping the throne and causing a monarch – God’s appointed – to be murdered. However much Will liked to lance the boil of people’s emotions, as he had put it, he would not be foolish enough to revive that. Not now, in these dangerous times, when an aged queen sat on the throne and people ceaselessly – and at their peril – voiced opinions about her successor. And especially not when, as the Secretary had just observed, the names Essex and Bolingbroke were already being linked, in pamphlets and in whispers on the street.

Even the maid finally flashed her black eyes at the spectre hovering between them. But it was the Queen who dismissed it. ‘He is not to return . . . in any way.’ She rose once more, shakily now, and faced John, looking at
him
again, not his sometime lord, her sometime lover. ‘That, Master Lawley, is the message you will take to him.’

So all his fears were realised. They wished to send him to Essex – the one man in the wide world, save only for the executioner, that he would most avoid. ‘
I
will, majesty?’

She took it as a statement, not a question. ‘Indeed you will. You will also bear other commandments – and our written displeasure too. But since you have always had some influence over him, and he is . . . obliged to you, perhaps you will also convey some sense behind the orders.’

He had to try. ‘Your grace, I have pressing matters of my own . . .’

‘More pressing than the realm’s and my own safety? Naughty knave, there are no matters beyond that.’

He thought of Tess, and of Ned. The palace bell recently striking the eleven. He could still make the play, as he had promised. ‘I could set out tomorrow . . .’

‘Tomorrow?’ Cecil stepped up to him now. ‘You would do the Queen’s and the realm’s most urgent business at your leisure?’ He shook his head. ‘No. You will depart as soon as the letters are sealed. With fair weather, a calm sea and little sleep, you will be in Dublin in five days.’

Dublin! The name was a curse. He had another place he needed to be, now. ‘Then perhaps while the letters are being drawn, I can go to Southwark. My business—’

‘Southwark!’ Cecil snorted. ‘To let you slip back into the slough you’ve just risen from? No, sirrah. You will be thrown in a cow trough to bathe and issued with clean clothes so that you do not reek, as befits the Queen’s messenger. You will be given a good horse, a purse of silver to hire more, our commissions and a party to accompany you the first fifty miles.’ He glared. ‘And you will ride for Ireland at two o’clock.’

At two o’clock, Ned would be glancing out wondering if his father might still make it. Yet perhaps he had heard of John’s most recent fall – Southwark was that small, and the Larkspur near its centre; would be thinking, even as he spoke the country girl’s lines, that his father had failed him once again. Will would clap a hand on his shoulder, sigh – and think about a different player for his upcoming Caesar. And Tess? Would Tess have heard of the siren who had lured him to his fall, of her blonde tresses and her sweet, sickly scent?

He looked up at her now. The black eyes were raised to him. There was a smile in them . . . and the hussy even gave a small wink! He turned from her eyes, to others’ – the Queen’s, her minister’s. There was no pity in any of them. He knew they would not even allow him to send his excuses – for a royal messenger’s departure needs must be secret.

He looked above them all to the wainscoted walls, those hooks set in them. Only fanatics denied their captors in Lollards’ Tower, and he was not prepared to burn.

He knelt again. ‘Your servant ever, majesty.’

Though they expected nothing less than complete obedience, still the Queen and her Secretary of State allowed a moment of brief relief to show. This business accomplished, they set out for the next.

Cecil went to the door. ‘In,’ he called. ‘Clear away.’

The servants came. The scribe collected the papers, folded the table, departed. A guard took away the Queen’s chair. Sarah took the pomander and glass from Elizabeth, curtseying as she did, staying down. ‘Majesty,’ said Cecil, also bending his knee in the doorway, gesturing that she should precede.

But the Queen did not move. She was still staring at John. Now she spoke, softly. ‘I wish a moment alone with my messenger.’

John, glancing away from the monarch’s piercing regard, saw the Secretary and the maid pass a look. He also recalled Cecil’s shock on his dismissal at their previous meeting, when Elizabeth also wanted to speak to him alone, her anger when he baulked.

It appeared that Cecil recalled it too. He took a breath, let it out, murmured, ‘Your grace,’ and left.

‘Sarah,’ said the Queen, ‘follow.’

Darting him a look, the maid left too.

And they were alone. When last they’d been, she had prised from him the history of his blood, and of hers, how the two of them were linked through his grandfather, Jean Rombaud, killing her mother, Anne Boleyn. Killing . . . and saving. He hoped it was not that of which she wanted to speak. He was not sure what he could say.

It was not. It was something of more . . . immediate concern. ‘There is one last message that I ask you to deliver to your lord,’ she said, ‘and only after my anger, my commandments have been fully understood – and obeyed, mark you, sir, obeyed. Then, Master Lawley, you will find the right moment to give him . . . this.’ She reached within her sleeve and drew out a handkerchief. Raising it to her face, she kissed it, then held it out. John rose to take it . . . but she did not release it straightway and they were joined by it.

Something passed between them along the spun silken threads. He felt as if he had been there before, doing this same thing before, receiving . . . something from a queen’s hand, in a place much like this one.

Elizabeth swayed, as if feeling the same force, till the cloth was stretched between them, then spoke again. ‘Tell him to bring this back to me in person. Tell my champion to wear it as my favour on his lance and’ – a glint came into her eye – ‘and if he stains it with a traitor’s blood, so much the better.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And tell him, finally, this.’ She sighed. ‘That when he comes to me, bringing this silk woven through the laurel wreath of victory, he shall find me . . . most forgiving.’

Her gaze held his. He found he could not speak, only nod and lower his eyes. The moment he did, she released the handkerchief and turned swiftly to the door. She opened it wide – to Sarah, on the other side, turned away. ‘Are you spying there, girl?’ the Queen snapped.

‘No, no, your grace. I’ – she swallowed – ‘I . . . I waited to help you down the stairs.’

Elizabeth did not reply, simply seized the arm that was held out. Together the two women descended, the spiral taking them swiftly from view.

John listened to their descent; knew that before long he would hear boots coming up, men arriving to bathe him, clothe him, supply him with what he needed and hasten him on his way. For the moment’s peace he had, he looked at what he held – a square of richest silk, unblemished . . . except in the corner where there were two initials, monogrammed in orange. No, he corrected himself. In tangerine.