His Dark Lady (3 page)

She would have laughed but her anger forbade it. Lettice guiltless? One day, she thought. One day I will make her suffer for this insolence.

‘You are fortunate that I am a forgiving queen,’ she told him, then hated herself for such female weakness. Arrest them both. Give Lettice a taste of the Tower that would leave her knock-kneed in fear for the rest of her life. Do not let their disobedience pass without right and proper punishment. Yet she found herself saying instead, ‘However, you will not return to court. You and your bride are no longer welcome there. Not for any reason, not on pain of death. Am I understood?’

Her favourite nodded, clearly relieved to have escaped a stay in the Tower. He knew what horrors that grim place held. They both did.

‘Yes, Your Majesty. I thank you for your mercy.’

He must think her a fool. And with good reason. She struck at him with the only thing she had left. Not her pride. Sweet Jesu, that had gone years ago between them. ‘If all goes well, you may yet be permitted to return to court to celebrate my nuptials. Though your wife will never be invited.’

His eyes had narrowed as he watched her face. Elizabeth smiled,
knowing
that word had slipped between his ribs like eight inches of Italian steel.

‘Yes, my
nuptials
,’ she repeated, gloating over his dismay. ‘For you should know, I have recently been reconsidering Alençon’s interesting proposal of marriage, and find we may suit after all. I could not take him seriously as a spotty youth, but now that he is grown to manhood and been made Duke of Anjou …’

‘Marry a Frenchman?’ Robert seemed to be choking.

‘You have often said I should marry, so why not a French noble? Besides, a union with France pleases me more each time I think of it.’ Oh, the steel was in him now, she thought. His eyes were suffering. ‘Alençon is still young, yes, but that will have its advantages in the marriage bed. Or so the doctors tell me.’

Excellent, she thought, now he’s sweating for quite another reason. As she turned to leave Robert to his feverish imaginings, Elizabeth permitted herself a further sharp thrust, just to make sure her favourite knew she meant it.

‘These things always take so long, though, if left to diplomacy alone. I will arrange for Alençon to visit me once he is free of his military duties, and then we shall see if any … intimacy develops. I am still angry with you, Robert, but we have been friends such a long time.’ One more should do the trick. ‘Wish me well with my young French suitor, won’t you?’

Part One

One

The Cross Keys Inn, London, autumn 1583

‘OUT THE WAY!’

At the hoarse cry, Will Shakespeare flattened himself against the wall of the passageway. Late for his cue again, William Kempe squeezed past in his tattered fool’s costume, gripping the wooden neck of a hobby horse. As he dashed on to the makeshift stage, the theatre erupted in cheers and whistles, those seated in the galleries drumming their feet on the wooden boards with a sound like thunder.

‘How now?’ Kempe called across the heads of the groundlings, then whirled into a crouch with teeth bared and arms wide.

The house fell silent and breathless, waiting for his next line.

Someone came up behind Will, muttering in his ear: ‘They were ready to tear the place apart a minute ago. Now they’re meek as lambs. How does he do it?’

It was James Burbage.

‘He makes them laugh and cry at the same time,’ Will whispered, watching Kempe as he effortlessly dominated the scene, ‘and they love him for it.’

‘Another full house.’ Burbage jingled a bag of coins at his belt. His voice held satisfaction. ‘God preserve us from the plague and the city magistrates, and we’ll be rich men in another year.’

Will looked at the heavy pocket-bag. ‘I owe a month’s rent.’

Burbage clapped him cheerfully on the shoulder. ‘All in good time, Shakespeare. Never let it be said I allow even my apprentices to go short. But think, if I were to pay you now, how much of it would go on saving your family’s reputation?’

Will frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Have you not heard of the fall of the mighty Ardens? Why, man, it’s all they were talking about in the Tabard last night.’

‘I was busy last night. Making a fresh assault on
The Troublesome Reign of King John
.’

‘Excellent. Is the play finished yet?’

‘Not quite. It is proving more troublesome than I expected. But if you will give me these ancient plays to rewrite …’ Will glanced out as another roar of laughter went up from the groundlings: Kempe galloping about with a woman’s petticoat over his face. ‘So what tale is this about the Ardens? They’re not close family of mine, you know. Distant cousins.’

‘Aye, that’s it, best to disown them.’ Burbage tucked his purse out of sight under the folds of his jacket. ‘No amount of money could save Edward Arden anyhow. They say his head will be decorating London Bridge soon enough. Yes, and with the rest of the family to follow by Christmas.’

Will stared. ‘Traitors? The Ardens?’

‘If you poked your head out of your pit more often, Master Shakespeare, you might hear something of the world’s doings. Yes, the Arden family were arrested as traitors a week or more ago. It’s a rare old tale. Arden’s son-in-law is John Somerville. You know of him, surely? Poor fool, they say he was born with his brain cracked. Well, good John sets off for London, ranting at every inn along the way that he plans to shoot the Queen.’

‘
What
?’

Burbage grinned, warming to his story. ‘Somerville was seized before he even reached the city, of course, and Edward Arden and his wife and daughter were taken soon after, as equal conspirators against the throne. The whole family rests now in the Tower, they say, with Edward Arden himself in Little Ease.’

‘Good God.’

Burbage laughed. ‘Who would have thought it, eh? Your sleepy
Warwickshire
risen against the Queen before the North. It seems the Catholic roots run deep there.’

Edward Arden, head of the family, in the grim Tower cell they called Little Ease, where it was said a man could neither lie down nor sit? Will thought of his mother and father back in Stratford, not far from the Arden estate.

‘What of the rest of the family?’ he demanded. ‘How far do these accusations go?’

‘Now, don’t start dreaming you’ll rush home to save your loved ones from the law. Write them to hide their catechisms and get themselves to a good Protestant Mass, and no one will hang for it. If the Queen killed all the Catholics, there’d be no one left to wind the clocks and run the towns. Jesu, man, you’re as pale as a sack of flour.’ Burbage nodded towards the stage. ‘Hurry, now. Isn’t that your cue?’

‘Aye, aye.’

Blowing out his cheeks, Will stepped from the dark passageway into the draughty hall of the Cross Keys Inn. The floor was lit with chill November sunshine streaming through the unshuttered windows, with lanterns set in brackets on the walls to further light the small playing area before the crowd.

All eyes turned to him as he made his entrance. Will felt again the rush of blood that had so excited him the first time he had ever spoken a line onstage. Then he had been a boy, beardless and still unmarried. It had seemed such a great adventure, playing to the city crowds at Coventry, walking home that night with the unaccustomed weight of coins in his purse. Now it was his work and he could not live without it. He was already up to his ears in debt, with a wife and child at home in Stratford expecting him to support them.

Yet there was still a tingle of excitement on treading the boards, knowing that when he opened his mouth to speak all these folk would stop and listen.

Kempe pretended to slip over, crossing the stage, and Will’s first line was drowned out by a roar of laughter from the crowd.

Undeterred, Will raised his voice.

Kempe stumbled back to his feet, his expression rueful. He made a face, then rubbed his backside with both hands. The crowd roared again, delighted by the fool’s antics.

Adopting an attitude at the front of the stage, Will folded his arms. He waited for the laughter to die away before attempting to deliver his next line. He suppressed a flicker of annoyance. It was all part of the act; Kempe loved to upstage the other players and raise the temperature of the house.

Will gazed across the laughing crowd of playgoers, those who could not afford seats pressed together near the stage. There was a cloaked woman among them, watching him intently. She was taller than the rest, her face half-hidden by a smoke-grey hood. There was something about the woman that drew Will’s attention, and it was not just that her skin was as black as the night sky, and her eyes …

A shock struck him, like a flaming arrow to the heart, and suddenly Will could not recall his next line.

‘Lucy,’ he whispered under his breath.

The woman stared back at him. Her dark gaze widened and locked to his.

He had been little more than a boy, a mere eleven years old, the summer he had met Lucy Morgan. Yet he had never forgotten her, nor the marvellous festivities laid on for the Queen’s visit during those long hot weeks.

Had she recognized him?

Kempe launched into a foolish little song-and-dance routine, improvised to cover Will’s silence.

‘There was a man with half a head,’ he began whimsically, and the audience laughed, waiting for the rest.

No doubt believing Will had forgotten it, the prompt called out his line from the side of the stage.

Faltering, Will gave his line, and the next lines too. But he performed them only to the Moorish woman in the hooded cloak, who did not smile at his attention but drew back cautiously into the shade of her hood.

That night at Kenilworth eight years ago, he had climbed the steep bank above the castle wall and seen Tom’s bloodied body on the grass, men peering down at his corpse in a ring of flickering torches. It had been his first sight of a dead body. At the time he had assumed that Tom Black and Lucy Morgan had been lovers, and that they would have married if the Moor had lived. Certainly the two had been close.

His father John had dragged Will home before he could discover the full truth of what had happened that night. A plot against the Queen was all he had been told, with never a whisper spoken afterwards. Everyone in Stratford knew the Shakespeares were not the good Protestants they pretended to be, so to dwell on such things could be dangerous. Will had begged to be taken back to Kenilworth to see Lucy, to comfort her over Tom’s death. Part of him had worried that he had been to blame, that he had not run for help quickly enough. But he had never seen Lucy again.

Now here she was, a few feet away in the crowd, no dream to vanish at daybreak but a flesh-and-blood woman.

A sudden shriek turned Will’s head. A woman had risen from her seat and was screaming hysterically, pointing at a broad-shouldered man in a coarse suit. He had blood on his hands and was stooping over another man, who seemed to be slumped in his seat.

The broad-shouldered man vaulted the wooden rail of the gallery and forced his way through the jostling crowd to one of the side corridors.

Nobody tried to stop him, though several shouted ‘Murderer!’ as he disappeared into the inn courtyard beyond.

When Will turned back, Lucy Morgan was gone.

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