The hall resounded with his name. Suffering Christ, thought John, and tried to smile, to think of something to say. But it was Sir Samuel, a gleam in his eye, who spoke next. ‘I owe him my life too, my lord,’ he piped. ‘Coming to bring him to you, we were beset by fifty ruffians. I went down under a dozen swords. All alone John Lawley came to my rescue and snatched me from my certain doom.’
‘John Lawley! John Lawley!’ came the cry from the hall. Jesu on the cross, John thought, I will be a ballad in Dublin’s taverns by nightfall. ‘My lord,’ he called, as the shouts died away, ‘I have news for you. Missives . . .’
Robert Devereux was having none of it. ‘Witness that,’ he shouted, waving to the hall as if it was a playhouse and his dais the platform. ‘Here not a day and once again a hero. Beating of a hundred villains, saving a knight’s life.’ He gazed down at the two men before him, a new fire in his eyes. ‘A knight he has little reason to love, now I remember me. And yet’ – he swayed, gripped the table, steadied, continued – ‘and yet he risked his life to save him. Jesu risen, but is that not nobility? Is that not a display of true knightly courtesy?’ He swivelled. ‘My lord of Southampton, what is the number of the knights we have dubbed on this campaign?’
Henry Wriothesley rose shakily. ‘A mere eighty, your lordship. And’ – he smiled down – ‘I can think of few who are so worthy of the honour.’
‘Yet is not this fellow, gallant though he may be . . . a player?’ Lord Sandys it was who spoke, accompanying the derisive term with a sneer.
‘Aye, a prince of players,’ the earl retorted, ‘and if we cannot make him a prince, we can at least make something else of him.’ He swept his arm around the hall. ‘Clear away there! Bring me my sword of state.’
John gaped. ‘My lord, do not do this. I am unworthy . . .’ but words were lost in a rush of drunken fumbling, of tables being pushed aside, chairs thrown back. John stood, a still centre to the swirl of preparation, shaking his head. This could not be happening, surely? And yet it was known that on three campaigns Essex had created as many knights as Elizabeth had in her whole reign; it was also said that little made her rage more. Though it was his prerogative, as viceroy, it was one honoured more in the breach than the observance. And John had never sought it, though the opportunity had arisen before. Indeed, he’d avoided it. For one, he knew he was no gentleman; but far more than that, to be one of Essex’s knight bannerets would forever yoke him to the earl and his cause; while such love from Essex would attract an equal and opposite hate not only from the Secretary of State but probably from her majesty herself.
He looked around – to the windows, the door, even the rafters. No escape anywhere. Besides, what would he do? Hurl himself from the battlements? All he did see was Tomkins, who had proved himself a better sort in the skirmish, grinning large at him . . . and then the look of purest horror on the porcine face of Sir Samuel D’Esparr. And in the look he realised something.
Despair would now have a knightly rival for Tess Morton’s hand.
Dazed by that thought, by everything, John shook his head, surrendered. Marched to the hall’s entrance, he was surrounded there by belted earls, hedged in by nobility. To a trumpet’s wobbly peal, and the drunken cheers of whores, nobles and scullions, he was marched back in. He knelt before his lord, wincing as the viceroy’s sword swatted his shoulder and clanged upon his skull. He rose when commanded – whereupon Robert Devereux clasped him tight, dropping tears on to his shoulder. ‘Sir John! Noble brother in arms. Ah, Sir John!’ he wept, hugging hard.
John looked beyond him. The hall was re-forming around fresh pots of liquor; whores were again circling, pretty youths gathering. Another spiral of debauched celebration was about to begin – with him as its cause and focus. Though this was as meet an occasion as ever whisky called for, he knew he could not; or rather he knew he could, it was all his desire, yet he must not. New knight he might be, but he could not get stuck there serving his ennobler. To avoid that, to discharge his duties and return to salvage his life, the Queen’s messenger had to speak to the Earl of Essex immediately, and alone.
‘My lord,’ he whispered, hugging back, ‘I bear messages from England.’
The earl released enough to fix him with a watery eye. ‘From whom?’
‘From the Queen.’
The eye widened, the voice dropped. ‘Has she heard . . . heard of the truce I have concluded?’
‘My lord, she has.’
‘And is she . . . is she pleased with her Robin?’
The words were spoken as if by a small child. It seemed cruel to reply as he had to – but crueller to delay the truth. ‘My lord . . . she is not.’
At this, the earl suddenly released John, pushing him back, clutching at his guts. ‘Ah, my torment comes! With me, man. Your arm, I beseech you.’
They began to push through the exultant mob to the arras behind the high table. Southampton, armed with a flagon, all smiles, tried to delay them, but with a groan Essex shoved past him, almost running now to the arras’s end. ‘Lift it,’ he moaned, fumbling at the buttons on his doublet. ‘Jesu mercy, be swift!’
John lifted the arras, opened the door it concealed. There was a corridor beyond that Essex ran down, opening buttons as he went. It ended in a semicircular turret, arrow slits in its walls, which contained Robert Devereux’s greatest desire – a hole the size of a platter set into a stone ledge.
The earl had no time to undo the points that attached doublet to trunk hose. No time even to fiddle open the last of the ivory-faced buttons. Ripping them, they pinged off stone as he cried, ‘Jesu! Aid me!’ and it was not to his saviour he appealed but to his newest knight, now acting the role of body servant. John knew what to do, had indeed done this before and more than once. Seizing the other’s padded shoulders from behind, crushing the gilt and lace, he pulled hard and down, peeling doublet and hose from the earl’s body as if they were one piece – which in a way they were, since all was tied together. The heavy folds of fabric hit the ground, the man’s bare arse poked from under his lawn shirt. Swivelling on the spot, for his ankles were wrapped still in hose, Essex plunged straight down over the stone hole . . . and only just in the nick.
A sound like grape shot came, together with a stench that would have maddened horses. ‘Yes! Oh yes,’ the Earl of Essex cried, his face filled with more ecstasy than wine or whore could ever conjure, head raised, eyes closed, lips moving, undoubtedly in mumbled prayer, to which he was much given. It took a long while for the other noises to subside, and only when they had did he open his eyes, look at John and say, in a voice almost normal, ‘Tell me then, what words my sovereign sends me.’
John swallowed. ‘Shall we not wait, my lord, till you are . . . finished in the jakes?’
The laugh that came was bitter. ‘Finished? I could be here all the night and there would never be an end. I have conducted whole campaigns from this position, as you well know. Perhaps your friend the playwright could frame that irony into verse.’ He groaned, farted wetly, shifted. ‘So tell me swiftly what lies my sweet Bess now believes of me.’
‘My lord, I think it would be best if you read them yourself.’
On his words, John delved into his satchel and finally executed his mission – he delivered the dispatches from Elizabeth, Queen of England, to Robert, Earl of Essex.
From one throne to another.
XXII
Wise Counsel
The earl received the satchel as if it contained what he had but lately voided. He reached in, drew out two packets. Laying aside the one sealed in the arms of the Duchy of Lancaster, he ripped off the royal seal and unfolded the parchment. ‘ “My Lord”,’ he read, then looked at John. ‘So cold,’ he sighed. ‘She does not even greet me as her Robin.’ He looked down, read, muttered, stray phrases emitted and echoed by a splattering beneath. ‘Perilous and contemptible,’ John heard. ‘A hollow peace.’ The earl read the parchment through, muttering the while, then held it to the side while he stared at
something far beyond the castle’s stones. John glimpsed tightly scrawled writing. Barely a page, but if it consisted of such words as Essex had let slip, it would be more than enough. Her majesty was known for both her concision and her corrosive wit. John watched as the man before him burned.
Essex read the page again more slowly, but now it was as if he were in angry conversation with his accuser, rebutting each point. John was no longer there; the argument was between the Queen and her vice-regent. ‘Face the issue?’ he spat. ‘What know you of the issue sitting safe in your palace? Come here, come command the sick and weary dregs you have given me to the heights you demand.’ He read on, muttered on, eructed on. ‘God’s teeth!’ he suddenly shouted. ‘She makes Tyrone’s private submission to me an incitement to treason. Treason! Me! Who has ever been the most loyal of . . .’ He trailed off, seeking something else amidst the spider’s scrawl. Gradually the muttered indignation faded. He read more carefully, his stares above John’s head lasting longer. Finally his gaze lowered and settled on the face of the man before him.
‘Her majesty did not write this letter.’
John hesitated. What good would it do to contradict him? Yet over the years he had always tried to steady the volatile man before him. On occasion, he had succeeded. ‘My lord, she gave it to me from her own hand.’
‘And she may have used that hand in its creation – but not her heart.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Who was standing over her when she wrote? Hmm? Did you see her alone?’
‘No.’
‘Who was with her?’
John hesitated. Yet there was no point in lying. ‘The Master Secretary.’
‘Ha ha!’ Essex threw himself back. ‘Cecil! That bottle-backed spider, that malevolent toad, that . . . of course he was there.’ He nodded vigorously. ‘He needed to witness that the poison he dripped into her ear had its foul effect.’ He reached out, gripped John by the front of his doublet, pulled him down till their faces were close, though he still bellowed. ‘My most bitter enemy dictated this letter and forced the Queen to sign it.’
This close, John could see in the earl’s eyes that he would accept no contrary argument. But he could perhaps be distracted into a better vein of thought – by a silken square John had, not in the satchel, but in a pouch within his doublet. ‘Good my lord . . .’ he began as he reached.
‘What letter, Robert?’
The interrupting voice came from down the corridor. Released, John turned to see the Earl of Southampton hurrying towards them. On his heels were Mounteagle, Rutland, Sussex and Lord Sandys.
‘This!’ As the men drew close, Essex shook the paper he held. ‘It purports to come from her majesty. But I declare she was coerced into signing it. It is not her sentiments. My sweet Bess was ne’er so cruel. Humpbacked Cecil wrote it.’ His gaze shifted. ‘Is that not so, Sir John?’
For a moment, John wondered whom the earl was addressing. He even looked behind him. When he realised, he started, then considered. He had to be careful here. The men in the corridor were all, in name, Essex’s. But any one of them could also be reporting to Cecil. Such was the nature of faction. ‘I think you will find, my lord, that the Secretary has sent his own missive.’
‘Hmm?’ Essex reached for the parchment he had thrown aside before. He held the seal of the Duchy of Lancaster for a moment – another title he had craved and been passed over for – then crushed the red wax, tossed it, ripped open the pages – there were several here – and read. As he did, the fever spots on his cheek deepened and it took but a moment for the oaths to come, a string of them accompanied by a whine from his guts that was almost feral. ‘As I thought,’ he cried, ‘the turd repeats coolly what he forced my Queen to sign in heat: that the peace is contemptible, that the truce must be repudiated on the nonce, that I must bring Tyrone to a pass of arms immediately – and that the forces I have already been given are ample to the task. Ample!’ he bellowed. ‘He sits on his inflamed arse in London and tells me how to conduct a campaign, this cripple who has lifted nothing more deadly than a fork. He plots against me in Council. But worse! He turns my sweet Bess’s regard against me with his lies. Lies!’ He half rose from his stone seat, waving the paper in the air. ‘I will countenance them no longer. This is what I think of Sir Robert Cecil and his words,’ he declared, and reaching behind him, he took the Master Secretary’s letter and wiped his arse with it.
The lords cheered. John closed his eyes. This, he thought, does not bode well.
On the instant, his thought was confirmed. ‘In the devil’s name, Robert,’ cried Southampton, ‘there’s treason in the court. The toad has corrupted her majesty. He must be confronted. He must be . . . dealt with.’
‘We must go at once. To the court. To the Queen,’ yelled Mounteagle.
‘To the court. To the Queen,’ echoed the others.
Essex was trying to dislodge the paper stuck to his fingers. Finally it fell into the jakes. He sat again, heavily, doubt displacing fury on his face. ‘Elizabeth expressly forbids my return,’ he said. ‘She orders that I stay and confront Tyrone.’
‘With what, sir?’ demanded Southampton. ‘A sick army against twice their number? A sick general too, for you are not well.’
‘’Tis true,’ Essex sighed, and farted, ‘I am not.’
‘And as you yourself said, my lord,’ added Lord Sandys, the eldest man there, with a face twisted into lines of bitterness, ‘such impossible orders do not come from her majesty anyway. They come from your greatest enemy. He commands the impossible, knowing your gallantry will make you assay it. Yet even Achilles and all his Myrmidons could not triumph here. Cecil wishes to see you destroyed for one reason alone: so he can rule the Queen unchallenged. Make his damnable peace with Spain. Secure the succession for James of Scotland!’ He looked around for support. ‘It is not action he commands here. It is treason!’
‘By God, sir, you are right, sir.’ Essex rose again, lifting off the hole as he spoke. ‘To return now is not only the necessary choice for myself. It is right for the Queen. It is right for England.’ His eyes misted. ‘By all the saints, it is my duty and I will not shirk it.’
The noble sound of the declaration was lessened by the sight – his lordship with his clothes snagged about his ankles, his shirt hanging to his naked thighs. John went and stood behind him, bent and lifted doublet and hose together. As Essex shrugged into them, Southampton spoke again. ‘Then let us gather the army, or the vanguard of it. A thousand brave knights riding under your banner? England would flock to it as it once did to Bolingbroke’s standard. We will march on the capital . . . and spike the traitor Cecil’s head on London Bridge.’
All there cheered – save John. He had stepped around to help Essex with such buttons as had survived, and was alarmed to see a familiar gleam in his eyes. He had seen it before – at Zutphen, at Cadiz – and it always heralded some mad act, some charge against the odds. Also, this was the very thing Cecil had feared the most, warned him against. He was already tainted with the title: Essex’s man. Now he was his newest knight banneret, a title that could readily see him hung, drawn and quartered. For this was treason being spoken here, no question, and labelled with a usurper’s name. ‘My lord,’ he said softly, holding him by his lapels, his own eyes seeking to secure a gaze already fixed on future glory, ‘do not do this. If you return to England thus, they will cry you traitor. Word will precede you that you come to make war upon the realm.’
‘No! Only upon Cecil and his cabal.’
‘But Cecil controls what people think,’ John continued urgently, more loudly, to top the murmurs of protest building behind him. ‘You say that he turns the Queen against you. What will he say to her when you march through the land at the head of an army?’
‘He will not be able to say anything with a spike through his skull.’ As he spoke, Southampton stepped close, reaching to John’s hands where they grasped near the earl’s neck, trying to pull them away. ‘Unhand, sirrah!’
But John would no
t be budged by a mayfly – and he was thinking fast. He knew the rash man he held, and that gleam, well enough to know he would not now be dissuaded. Yet he was ever malleable – perhaps he could be moulded into a more pleasing shape. ‘Think, Robbie,’ he whispered, at last trapping the earl’s shifting eyes with this rare personal address. ‘If you go with an army, you needs must go slowly. Your enemy will be forewarned and make preparations. Perhaps it will come to a pass of arms with all its hazards. At the least, London will be turned into an armed camp against your coming. And then the venomous toad will have all the time he needs to drip that poison into the ear of your sweet Bess. But if you were to arrive before he even knows you have left’ – he let a smile come – ‘well, good my lord, you will be there swiftly enough, and in your beloved person, to provide the antidote.’
The earl’s watery gaze finally settled upon him. ‘What is it you suggest, Johnnie?’
Ignoring Southampton’s continuing tugs and protests, John replied, ‘This. I have just made the journey from London in five days, and you are twice the horseman I will ever be. So ride, with only your closest companions. Ride for Whitehall, make straight for the Queen. Your words, your presence. She will listen to you, heed your grievances, see your truth.’ He leaned nearer. ‘And then she will dispatch your enemies.’
He had no idea if what he said was true. Having spoken to the Queen twice now, and knowing the cunning of Cecil, he suspected not. Yet he had been in enough of his friend’s plays to understand a little of the horrors of the civil war Essex’s armed return would bring. This alternative was better – for England, for Essex . . . and for himself. A proclaimed traitor would never win Tess back. Ned would never rise as a traitor’s son; while the players would never let such a one share a platform with them. They will have enough problem with a knight, he thought, flushing cold, something he had not yet considered.