John had endured ambushes by Spaniards, and by Indians, and survived them all. But survival required a lot of fight to gain the opportune moment for flight. And it required a sword – his sword, which was in his scabbard over the shoulder of the man ahead.
The big Irish spearman had only been briefly dissuaded by the blow to his head. He came again now, yelling, point levelled. Kicking his heels in, John drove his horse on, away from the thrust, dragging the reins from the other man’s snatching hands. He was next to Tomkins in a trice. ‘Sword!’ he bellowed, leaning back to avoid the swishing cuts that were keeping the attackers at bay. The man heard, saw. He may have been a cur serving a dog, but he obviously had been a soldier and he recognised bad odds and some aid. Catching the nearest attacker with a cut that took half his ear gained him the moment to bend at the waist towards John, and it took but that moment to snatch out his backsword. As soon as he had it, he was whirling it without aim; just as well as it rang off the steel of two thrusts, knocking both aside.
The trees pressed close, narrowing the path. The ambushers swarmed, to John’s eye a score at least to their five survivors, but their farmyard weapons revealed they were probably not soldiers and his escort were; and they were mounted. Even if only four of them were actually fighting, Sir Samuel’s spinning horse was keeping several of the assailants occupied. John, taking advantage of height, struck down, the folded weight of his backsword dropping as sudden as a thunderbolt. He drove forward into Tomkins’s assailants, forcing men to duck, plunge, weave, more concerned now with dodging steel than striking with it. One man ran at him, wielding a sickle, leaning back to swipe. But he had a balancing hand forward, so John cut it off.
A terrible shriek, more sprayed blood, a slight drop in ferocity . . . and then a cry louder than all the rest. The huge Irishman who had first attacked John was running at him again now, spear levelled – and by the way he held it, he, at least, had held one before. Placing his head alongside his horse’s neck, John kicked hard with his heels, and the horse leapt forward. The running giant had not allowed for it, nor the backsword thrust ahead, which John used to deflect the spear tip along his mount’s flank, flicking his point back in time to let the man impale his neck upon it. As he fell, John twisted then withdrew his blade.
It was the moment. The attackers were suddenly aware of their diminished numbers, with their leader, John presumed, felled in their midst. Tomkins felt it too. ‘Ride!’ he screamed, and John joined the others in heeling their mounts into a gallop, ducking under the rope, riding clear, only screams pursuing them. There was a hill; the horses climbed it easily, their eyes wide, foam on their chests. At the top, the tree avenue ended and they were looking down at a plain, the track ahead of them leading to a walled city about a mile away.
Exultation! The four men who reined in and sheathed their swords were all laughing, at the thrill of survival. Yet John’s laugh ended abruptly when he looked around, looked again, and realised. ‘Where’s Despair?’
Tomkins swivelled, then gazed back down the avenue. They could not see the place of ambush. But they could hear a variety of cries from the trees: agony, fury . . . and one high-pitched squeal. ‘There,’ he replied.
It would not be the first time John had wished his rival dead. The feeling that came was instant: joy, for the main obstacle on his path back to Tess was e’en then being removed, separated into parts by Irish farm tools. Then, immediately, that feeling left. For all his hate of him, Sir Samuel was, for the nonce, a comrade. You left no one to your enemies’ mercy, especially when they would have none. That was as ingrained in him as a hard parry to quarto. Also he knew himself, knew he would not haply reclaim Tess with her fiancé’s mutilated corpse a spectre at any feast.
‘We have to go back for him,’ he said. ‘Are you game?’
Tomkins spat, nodded. ‘Fat bastard owes me six months’ wages. I’ll get none if he dies.’ He turned to the two surviving troopers. ‘Draw swords, boys.’
Each man blinked at him. ‘Corporal, we can’t . . .’
‘What?’ Tompkins roared. ‘Are you refusing an order? That’s a hanging offence.’ Then frown changed to grin. ‘Come, lads, this is what you were trained for.’ He drew his own sword again. ‘Charge!’
John drew, as, with less enthusiasm, did the other two. ‘For England!’ he cried, bringing his horse up on its rear legs.
On his cry, the four set spurs to flanks and galloped back down the hill. A further thought came, as they built up speed: Sir Samuel had strapped the satchel with the Queen’s papers around his chest. John needed them back. He did not relish explaining Elizabeth’s messages, and her wrath, to the Earl of Essex.
The ambushers were obviously not expecting them. They had gathered around the fallen men and were engaged in stripping them of all they possessed. The horses had already been led away, so the avenue was clear. The Irishmen squealed, leapt up, tried to scatter, a group of five rising from the large, tangerine-swathed bulk of Sir Samuel – four who had held a limb each, the fifth who must have been prodding at him with a sickle. John directed his horse straight into them, relying on his mount to avoid the prone body, not caring too much if the knight took the odd hoof strike. He slashed down, slicing one man on the shoulder who screamed and fell. Jabbed after another who must have felt the steel thrust at his back, threw himself forward, tumbled, rolled and next moment was running into the tree line. John looked around – Tomkins had knocked one man down and his horse was trampling a second underhoof. The troopers were cutting at the backs of men fleeing fast into the woods. In moments, only Englishmen held the field.
John looked down. Sir Samuel was sobbing, his hands pressed to his face, his body twitching in anticipation of blows. The sickle had already made slashes in the velvet of his doublet, pink flesh wobbling beneath the rents. ‘Samuel,’ John called, ‘they are gone. But they may return. Mount and swiftly!’
The knight made no reply, just carried on weeping into his palms. ‘Mount, sir,’ John called again, again to no effect. Sighing, he called to Tomkins, ‘I’ll hold your reins. Get him up and over.’
The other man threw his reins across, one trooper did likewise to his fellow, and both men, after a struggle, got the quivering knight to his feet. But he still would not cease his blubbering nor use his hands to mount up behind John – who lost patience, for he was scanning the woods and shapes were again gathering there. ‘Throw him up, a God’s mercy, and let us away!’ he cried.
With some difficulty, the two men obeyed. When the bulk of the knight lay across his horse’s rump, John leaned down and whispered, ‘Hold tight, for if you fall off, I swear I will abandon you. We’ll see who’s sodomised then.’
It had its effect. Sir Samuel grabbed the rear of John’s saddle, held hard. Another of the wounded troopers was atop another haunch. With a jab of heels, the men cantered out of the forest, stopping only at the same hilltop when his burden looked certain to slip off. John dismounted, prised D’Esparr’s fingers from their grip and lowered him to his feet.
‘They were going to . . . they were about to . . .’ the knight babbled, gesturing vaguely towards his groin. ‘If you hadn’t come they would have . . .’ He sobbed, then grabbed John by the neck, daubing his collar in snot. ‘Thank you, my friend. Thank you for saving me.’
‘I saved these,’ replied John, already regretting his heroics, unstrapping the satchel, slipping it over his own shoulder. ‘You were the bearer. Now up, sir, and let’s away.’
A riderless horse had followed them on their last gallop from the forest. Sir Samuel was hoisted into the saddle. The wounded trooper had one broken arm but could cling on to a comrade with his other.
‘To Dublin,’ John said.
Descending the reverse slope of the hill, his heart calming till it no longer threatened to burst from his chest, he took stock. It appeared that though he had not been at war for three years, he’d forgotten little. Yet the thought that prevailed shocked him.
Was it possible?
Was he actually looking forward to seeing Robert Devereux? For all his faults, the earl would provide a happier time than he had experienced so far on Erin’s shore, surely?
XXI
Sodom and Gomorrah
He was wrong. So wrong.
He knew something was amiss from the moment they arrived at the city’s gates. The guards were drunk, alternately officious and venal. A silver shilling from the Queen’s purse, with the pledge to drink the health of the majesty depicted upon it, saw them inside the walls. Thereafter, through every narrow street they threaded, aiming for the rise of Dublin’s castle, there was more of the same. Soldiers sprawled before taverns in late summer heat, red faces raised to the sun, tankards and bottles to lips. Whores with their flounced skirts and naked shoulders moved among the mob, hard-eyed and seeking custom, and not having to seek far. Men who’d gone to war and returned wished to celebrate both, in liquor and in loins.
It was a city given over to celebration. Yet John, who’d enjoyed any number of victory feasts, recognised that this one was different. For no major battles had been fought, no enemy conquered and only excess could transform the word ‘truce’ into anything close to ‘triumph’. He could see too that the strain of pretending anything else was telling on the participants. It was near a fortnight since the rebel and the general had agreed terms in Lagan’s waters. Two weeks in which all the drinking and the drabbing were no longer having their same lulling effects. In almost every inn they passed, John noted men staring angrily ahead, watched fights flare into sudden viciousness, swords drawn, daggers wielded, cudgels plied. Heat and ale and disappointment had taken their toll, and if the Queen’s soldier could not make an Irishman fight him, he could at least turn the Englishman before him into a good substitute.
The three remaining troopers accompanied them as far as the castle. There D’Esparr, who had used the slow progress through the choked streets to calm his breathing, clean his clothes and gather himself, dismissed them to the town’s pleasures. Only the three of them asked for entrance, and the guards, only marginally less drunk than the gatekeepers before, demanded twice their fee.
Sir Samuel knew the way and they followed him up the circular stair. On each curve the tumult ahead grew, and by the time they stood before a huge oaken door, the roar of carousing beyond it was unmistakable. Two guards sat there, leather bottles in hand, pikes leaning against the wall behind them. They did not bother to rise, just glanced at the warrant Sir Samuel now produced – that John had failed to reclaim from him – and nodded them to the door.
‘Tomkins,’ D’Esparr declared, straightening his empty sword belt, tucking his shirt into his collar.
His man stepped around him and opened the door . . .
. . . on to Sodom and Gomorrah.
John knew the story well enough. When a lad, it was one of the few that interested him in the Bible, and all those in the Old Testament where battle and copulation could be had. The inhabitants of those towns had been punished for their sins. Yet what those Israelites of old had managed to bring God’s wrath upon them, their counterparts of England had equalled if not outdone.
Where is a smiting angel of the Lord when you need one? John thought, gazing upon the scene.
The hall was as large as the one at Whitehall where John had seen the Shrovetide play. But that one was dressed in the latest fancies, with new tapestries and stained glass, its flames neatly contained in lanterns and candelabra. It was modern, of its time. This hall looked as if John had stepped back two hundred years, with a vast fireplace at its centre over which the carcass of an ox still dripped fat, while reed torches on vast fluted columns lit the assembly in further flame.
Or perhaps the angel has passed over and smitten, John thought, as D’Esparr began to thread through the sprawled, raucous crowd. For these indeed looked like denizens of some circle in hell, their faces smeared with animal grease, their shirt collars rubied with wine. Gluttons perhaps, forced to overfeed for eternity.
To his left, in the centre of a rough circle of men, something was moving up and down. Someone. He glanced, looked away. Gluttony was not the only sin on display, gentility had collapsed, these so-called noblemen turning as base as any common soldier, for they were not even bothering to remove themselves to slake their lusts. If the whores were a trifle cleaner, a little prettier than street drabs, they were paid a little more. Yet another glance told him that women were not the only traders here this night. Noblemen usually kept such things discreet, often in the country, away from the court – sodomy was a capital crime. Discretion did not apply here, that was certain, for comely boys lolled on laps, feeding, being fed.
They were making for a raised dais at the room’s end, a table upon it, as medieval as the hall. Behind it sat the leaders, setting an example as leaders should, for whores and boys were all about. It looked like the corruption of a painting he recalled seeing in Italy – a last supper of apostles and fallen saints. He recognised the lords Mounteagle, Cromwell and Sandys, heads close at one end as if singing a catch. At the other sat a clutch of earls – Rutland, Sussex and Bedford, each with a woman on his lap, each laughing to his fellow around his trull’s exposed bosoms.
Continuing the line of earldoms, linking end to middle, John saw one he knew better – Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. He knew him because he had been, for some time, his friend Shakespeare’s patron. Some said he was more than that, though if true, Will was as discreet as these noblemen weren’t. He had dedicated glorious love poems to the earl, whose beauty, almost female in its nature, astonished. Once Southampton was sucked into Essex’s orbit, patron and poet had seen less of each other, though John knew Will was still fond of the younger man.
I do not know whether he will inspire such poetry again, he thought, frankly studying. That youth who had dazzled London for near a decade was fading. The beauty was still there, but it was like a rose out of season, curling and brown at the edges. He was leering now, fending off the questing hands of the woman to his right, all his attention focused left and somewhat downwards. And John, who had been seeking just one man, found him now where he expected him, slap in the centre. He’d only missed him because he was face down on the table.
D’Esparr called, ‘My lord! My lord of Essex!’
And there he was. ‘What?’ bellowed Robert Devereux, jerking upright, staring wildly about. ‘Who is’t who dares disturb me?’
‘Uh, uh, I, my lord? Sir Samuel D’Esparr?’ The knight swallowed, continued, ‘I . . . I . . . have left my post to bring you urgent—’
‘Silence!’ roared the earl, glaring not just at the knight before him but all around. Lutes that were being untunefully plucked ceased. The chorus of lords at table’s end halted their unharmonious drone. There were giggles and moans still from those too engaged to be distracted. But Southampton rose to add his bellow, commanding a bugler to sound. The man did, though the off and distressed notes showed him to be as drunk as any there.
While tumult subsided, over D’Esparr’s shoulder John stared only at the earl, trying to reckon him, gauging how hard his mission and thus his swift escape might be. First glance was not inspiring. The eyes were milky, the near bleached whiteness of his skin emphasised by fever-red spots upon his cheeks. Worse though was his gauntness, for he looked as if he had dropped a third of his weight since their last encounter. John had seen him thus before, in the Netherlands. A man glowed in this manner when gripped by the bloody flux. It did not tend to leave him in possession of all his wits, and his lordship rarely had the full arsenal to begin with.
John closed his eyes. Let me be done with this and soon, he prayed. Let me deliver the Queen’s message and depart. Let me not get sucked again into the madness of Essex.
Another bellow forced them open. ‘What is it, Despair?’ yelled the earl. ‘Why are you not upon the coast? Why have you deserted your post? Desertion, by Christ’s bones!’ he roared.
‘No, my . . . my lord . . . I . . .’ His little eyes swivelled
around. ‘I bring you the Queen’s messenger. I thought it my . . . my . . . my duty to accompany him.’ He swallowed. ‘We were ambushed, fought our way out.’ His voice piped still higher under Essex’s continuing glare. ‘This man saved my life, came back for me when I was down.’
John shook his head. He suspected Sir Samuel had not planned to babble like this; was sure, indeed, that he would try to claim all glory from the ambuscado, while forgetting altogether the rolling and squealing and soiling. But the Earl of Essex had rattled him. He had that effect on most men.
‘Man? What man?’ his lordship cried.
‘Er, this one, my lord.’
Sir Samuel reached back, grabbed John’s arm, tried to shove him forward. Shrugging off the grip, John took a step towards the table.
The earl peered, rubbed his eyes, peered closer. Then, it was as if his face transformed into another’s, or he contrived to briefly shed twenty years of hard living in a moment. ‘Od’s heartlings!’ he cried. ‘Od’s breath! My old friend.’
People were standing now in the hall, the better to see. At the table, all the nobility half rose to peer down at him. John winced. His plans to deliver his messages quietly and disappear were at naught. ‘My noble lord,’ he said softly, bowing from the waist.
Essex stood too, arms opened wide as if to embrace. ‘Do you know who this man is?’ he shouted. ‘This is he who rode cheek by jowl with me into the Spanish ranks at Zutphen. This he who warded my back there and at Cadiz! S’blood, I owe him my life thrice over.’ Those reddened eyes, always watery, flooded their banks now. ‘And see how he comes, once more in my hour of need, risen from his own fever-racked bed, and with reinforcements from his native Cornwall, stout hearts like himself, no doubt. Ah, if only you had come a week since, my friend, to share our glory.’ He sniffed, bent, picked up his tankard. ‘A pledge to him, to this gallant sir, the peerless . . . John Lawley!’