His Dark Lady (20 page)

‘Get away from the door!’ Will shouted as he burst among them, and the rough-looking crowd of men gathered like hungry dogs around the barred door to his father’s house stared and fell back. ‘Take to your heels, you filthy whoremongers. Save yourselves while you still have legs to walk. Or I swear I shall spit you where you stand and wear your eyeballs for tokens!’

It was a speech he had given on stage, and seemed to suit the moment well. Some of the men drew their daggers but did not move towards him, their faces uncertain. The others stood together, staring at his sword and then, more perplexed, at his bare legs.

Some of their neighbours had stirred at the early-morning ruckus, and were now approaching from the row of thatched houses and shops opposite. The sun had only just risen, and a few of the men looked angry, rubbing their eyes and yawning.

Will’s father had thrown back the shutters above and was leaning out of the window, his nightshirt more soberly covered with a cloak.

One of their neighbours called out, ‘John, when will you learn to pay your debts? You bring shame to our street with these disturbances.’

Will took another step forward, the sword outstretched. ‘There is no need for you to involve yourself, Master Fletcher,’ he said, recognizing one of his father’s old rivals on the town council, from the days when John Shakespeare had still been a name to reckon with in Stratford.

‘Young Will back from the big city, is it?’ Master Fletcher replied, and snorted in derision at the sword. ‘A plaything in a boy’s hand. That won’t last three strokes against a proper blade.’

‘Try me,’ Will muttered.

John Shakespeare called down to the angry men below, his voice hoarse. ‘I’ve told you, there’s nothing in the house for you. Let a man earn an honest wage before you come to him for your money. Thomas, for the love of God,’ he appealed to the ringleader, a stout man in a well-trimmed doublet and hose, his fleshy face red with fury, ‘you know I’m good for it. Times have been hard for all of us. No one is buying except the gentry. But it will soon be summer’s end, and then everyone will be wanting new gloves for winter.’

‘That makes sense, Thomas,’ one of the older men exclaimed, and tugged on the leader’s arm. ‘Look, we’ve woken half the town. Short
of
breaking Shakespeare’s door down, we’ll not get our money today. Let’s go in peace and come back in the autumn, when he can pay us.’

‘Double,’ Thomas said, stabbing an accusing finger up at the open window where John Shakespeare stood, his wife at his shoulder. ‘He’ll pay us double what he owes, for making us wait.’

‘That’s usury!’ John Shakespeare exclaimed, a hard flush in his face. ‘I’ll pay what I owe, as is only fair under the law, and an extra two shillings a head for your journey here today.’

‘That’s a good offer, Thomas,’ the man muttered, and gestured the others to follow him. ‘We’ll come back another time. If he can’t pay then, we’ll demand his arrest and his possessions forfeit and sold to the cost of his debt. That’s owed us under the law.’

‘Aye, we’ll be back after the summer.’

One of the men spat on the ground, as if to seal the deal, then followed the others as they walked back to the carts and horses which had brought them into town.

The stout ringleader did not seem to believe they should have given up the fight so easily.

Nonetheless, he glanced at Will with his outstretched sword and reluctantly followed his friends back to the carts.

‘Next time, Master Shakespeare, you had better have your debt ready to pay, and the right money too, or I shall not answer for my anger.’ The man swung himself up on to a covered wagon and slapped the horses’ reins. ‘Walk on!’

Above them, John Shakespeare closed the shutters about his bedchamber window with a bang.

Their neighbours were still staring from windows and doorways, most in nightcaps and gowns. Will looked about at their wide-eyed faces, daring any of them to pass comment on his attire, then made his way back to his own snug little house.

Anne stood waiting for him on the doorstep, dressed now in her day clothes. Susanna, perched on her mother’s hip, brightly gurgled at his approach and held out a chubby hand to him.

Will bent to kiss her hand, which made the child gurgle even more, her little face delighted, then he led them both inside. The room was chilly, the hearth still dirtied with last night’s cold ashes. Once the door was closed he stood his sword against the wall and turned to Anne.

‘I told you to stay indoors.’

‘You are my husband, Will. I was worried for you.’

He tried to keep his tone light, his anger under control. He did not want to raise his voice in front of the child. ‘I am not a boy, Anne. I do not need my wife to watch over me. It was nothing. Those men were full of bluster, that is all. Wind and bluster. They blew themselves out.’

‘Is that why you took the sword?’ She was busy tidying the child’s rough smock, cleaning her face with a wetted finger. ‘Because it was nothing?’

Will drew a breath and let it out again. ‘You are a woman. You do not understand how these things work. They needed to see the sword to know that I was serious. Next time they come for their money, they will be more polite about it.’

Her blue eyes lifted to his face. ‘Or they will come with swords and pikes, and kill us in our beds.’

‘That will not happen. This is England. We are at peace with our neighbours.’

‘Will—’ she began, and he silenced her with an angry look.

‘That is enough. You have said your piece, Anne, and I have said mine. That is an end to it. Now I must get dressed and speak with my father. He will expect it.’

Will stooped slightly to enter his father’s house, finding his sister and his brothers sitting at the fireside, taking some porridge to start the day. They called out to him joyously, their little faces bright with enthusiasm. ‘Will! Will!’

His sister Joan came to kiss him on the cheek, her smile entertained. ‘My fiery brother! Where is your sword? The little ones want to see it.’

‘I’ve put the sword away,’ he admitted, grinning over her head at his younger brothers. ‘But I’ll get it out again later and show you a pass or two I’ve learned at the playhouses in London. Once I even had to die on stage. I made a good death,’ he added, and clutched his belly, staggering about the small kitchen as though mortally wounded. ‘But then I could not move until the end of the scene, and a fly lighted right on the end of my nose.’

The children gaped in delight and astonishment at this,
then
begged to hear more about the kinds of plays he had acted in.

‘Later, later,’ he told them, laughing at their insistence. He kissed his mother on the cheek and sat at the table. ‘First let me take a bowl of that porridge, if I may. It smells so good!’

But after he had eaten, it was time for Dick to set off for school. Will watched him go, then shut the door and went to sit by the fire, his conscience pricking him uneasily. He was a married man and this was his family. This was where he belonged. He should never have risked all this by pursuing Lucy Morgan. What would his father say if he knew the extent of his involvement with another woman?

Will was burned up with lust for her beauty. Her face haunted his sleep. But his soul was in jeopardy, and he knew it. He did not want to be a Jack-the-lad like most of the other players, who boasted of their conquests and held it a triumph if they managed to hoodwink one mistress while sleeping with another.

When he returned to London, he would make no further attempt to seek Lucy out again. This constant wish to betray his wife was a sin, and unworthy of his vows to her. He must conquer his lust for Lucy Morgan, or else give up the stage and become a glover here in Stratford like his father. Anything less was unworthy.

Seventeen

THE PALACE OF
Nonsuch had been built by Elizabeth’s father, and bore King Henry’s lavish but undoubtedly male touch in its marvellous octagonal turrets and panelled royal chambers. While the outer courtyard was plain enough, the inner one looked more like a Roman temple than a hunting lodge, its walls heavy with stucco gods and goddesses, and many of the doors and fittings in the palace itself gilt as befitted a king’s residence. The grand tapestries in the halls were faded, though, some in dire need of repair, and all looked as though they belonged to her grandfather’s generation rather than her father’s. Everything about the place seemed larger than she would like, the furnishings and even the rooms themselves somehow awkward and unsubtle, the ceilings too high and the bed-chambers draughty.

She enjoyed her visits the most in summer, when the formal gardens were at their best and she could walk beside the cooling fountains. In the winter, there was an air of gloominess that hung over Nonsuch Palace and made her long to be elsewhere. Though even in broad sunlight, on a long hot summer’s day, Elizabeth could sense some unspoken menace about the place. Walking in the gardens with her ladies in the mornings, delighted by the butterflies that played so daintily about their heads, she would look back, and it would seem as though the turreted palace was frowning at her.

A foolish idea, but one she had never quite been able to shake off.

Now, though, she stood alone with her closest advisers in the
Rose
Room, beneath a high and marvellously intricate ceiling of red-emblazoned stucco roses, that dizzied her whenever she looked up at them. Elizabeth laid aside the letter she had been reading from her Scots cousin Mary, closing her eyes in sudden, bitter fury.

‘Why does my cousin still live?’ she demanded of Cecil and Walsingham, aware of the peevish note in her voice but too frustrated to care what they thought. ‘Mary is never comfortable. She complains of her jailors. She complains that her bed is too hard. If a meal gives her the stomach ache, she suspects poison. She asks why, if I love my cousin, I should allow her to suffer these indignities, and does not speak of the troubles she causes me simply by being on God’s earth. Why can Mary not be like any other mortal and die of the ague, or the pain in her bones, or whatever new sickness plagues her body whenever she writes to me?’

‘It could be arranged, Your Majesty,’ Walsingham murmured discreetly, and passed her a silver dish of sugared almonds.

She opened her eyes to glare at him. ‘I am no murderer, sir. I do not ask for her food to be poisoned by one of your agents. I ask why God in his mercy does not rid me of this woman, this bitter thorn in my side. Every day now, it seems, you come to tell me of some new fanatic who would see Mary crowned in my place, or the thousand Catholic priests who swarm on to our shores each year to spread civil disobedience along with their Roman faith. My own nobles whisper my cousin’s name behind my back, saying she is more beautiful and more devout and more fit to be queen than I am.’

‘Your Majesty, I cannot believe—’

‘Do not look at me with that long face, my lord, and say you cannot believe such things,’ she told Cecil in a waspish tone. ‘Not when your friend Walsingham whispers daily in my ear of secret revolts, and intercepted letters between conspirators, and courtiers who meet after midnight in the darkest corners of my palace.’

‘Not in your own palace,’ Walsingham corrected her gently. ‘Even those who wish for new governance would not be so bold.’

‘New governance?’ she repeated scornfully. ‘To put a whore on the throne of England, and watch her tear this land apart with her ignoble lovers and her divorces and her open murders? Is that the new governance of which you speak?’

Cecil cleared his throat. ‘It shall not happen, Your Majesty, for the
remedy
lies in your own hands. If you would only agree to what we have discussed, there could be an end to these constant plans and plottings, and peace secured for England.’

‘Order Mary’s execution?’ Elizabeth demanded, and shivered just at the sound of those heretical words. ‘On what grounds?’

Walsingham arched his thin dark brows. ‘We have evidence enough to condemn that lady ten times over, Your Majesty. I hold in my own custody men who have admitted to carrying letters of rebellion against Your Sovereign Highness, and some of those letters are either addressed directly to your cousin or signed by Mary in full knowledge of her treason. If you would allow me to read you one or two of these secret letters, I could soon point out the fault.’

Elizabeth made an angry noise at this, and Walsingham bowed, yet continued with his argument undeterred.

‘I am convinced you would be less averse to ending this dance of plot and counter-plot if you would but agree to read her treason first-hand.’

‘I have told you before: I shall not budge on this point. I grant you, gentlemen, my cousin Mary is a whore and a traitorous conspirator against my throne. But she is still my cousin, an anointed queen whose Scottish throne has been usurped. I shall not spill a drop of royal blood, no matter what the provocation.’

She had spoken passionately, with a fiery heart, but knew her head to be clear on this point at least.

Her councillors stood silent, their grey heads bowed in deference to her orders, though no doubt thinking her a foolish woman with no more sense than a peahen.