‘You’ve seen him?’
‘Aye. Though he has made it clear it is for the last time.’
Behind them, someone hissed, ‘For shame, sir. Burbage speaks!’ Tess leaned a little closer. John inhaled her, some potion of lavender and comfrey about her. He closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying a far sweeter scent than cloves.
‘Can you blame him?’ Tess whispered, even lower. ‘He has not the experience of your broken promises that I have. This time he had hopes . . .’
‘Stop,’ he whispered back. ‘You cannot whip me more for it than I have whipped myself.’ He could not think what next to say. So instead of trying, he reached within his doublet and drew out the letter that he had kept there in all the miles from Dublin. Wordlessly, he handed it to her.
She took it, stared at the familiar seal, broke it, began to read the words of Samuel D’Esparr. John turned again to the stage, where a thunder roll ended one scene and heralded another – one that brought Ned back on, following Gus Phillips. They took their positions, began to speak. And somehow John was able to mostly forget what the woman beside him was reading, and listen. Ned was clear . . . yet he seemed to John a little stiff. Perhaps our recent encounter has unsettled him, he thought, to his regret. Yet when Ned said:
When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes
a sigh ran through the Globe. There had been many signs and portents in the summer skies over London. And England had an aged queen.
His attention was drawn back by the folding of paper. He glanced sideways. Tess was staring forward, but not at the stage. At something beyond.
‘My . . . Samuel says that you fought together. More – that during an ambuscade, you saved his life.’
‘I did.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why did you save him? Would it not have suited you better to see him dead?’
John frowned. ‘Undoubtedly it would,’ he said, ‘and I admit there are still times when I hope the Irish succeed where last they failed, and pierce his fat guts through.’ He shook his head. ‘But even if you condemn me in so much, Tess, you must allow me this: I am not a dastard. I would never seek to win you through Despair’s death if I had the power to prevent it.’
He had whispered with some heat, provoking more hisses from behind them. Tess reached over and laid a hand on one of his, squeezed briefly, withdrew it. ‘I know you are not, John. You are, despite it all, a noble man.’ Before he could venture that he was, in more ways than she could yet know, she continued. ‘Though I wonder much at this,’ she said, lifting the letter. ‘My fiancé speaks more . . . feelingly than he was wont.’
Or I’ll not trust whisky, thought John. He’d made sure that Sir Samuel had taken a skinful, was suitably maudlin and still full grateful when he wrote. A sober morning and Despair might have produced a very different letter, glossing over John’s rescue, emphasising his own courage. Still, his missive had achieved this much at least: his love was no longer looking at him with that terrible mixture of pity and disdain. A small victory that perhaps could be followed up. ‘Tess, hear me. I have to g—’
‘Will you cease your prattling, varlet?’ The bellow came from right behind him, accompanied by a hard shove, and continued, ‘We are trying to listen to the play.’
The noise would perhaps not have drawn so much attention. It was the custom in the playhouse for people to converse, to comment, to voice their displeasure. Not even Burbage could hold them silent for ever. Unfortunately, the matronly shover had a bass bellow that would not have disgraced the platform, produced from a chest that would have disgraced no mastiff. Beside her, a terrier of a man equally glared, and when John said, ‘Lady, I seek only to . . .’ he got no further, for the terrier snarled, reached up and threw John’s hat from his head.
The stage was shaken by more thunder. Most people were drawn back to it. But John, as he bent to retrieve his hat, noticed that a few weren’t – most especially Cecil’s officer, who was staring straight at him.
He turned to Tess. ‘I have to leave now. But know this first: I will return and I will try to make amends. For ever this time.’
He was half up when her hand delayed him. ‘John, what is wrong?’
He glanced around. More than one man was converging. ‘I have made a powerful enemy. Adieu.’
With that, he headed for the stairs to accompanying snarls from the mastiff and her terrier. He gained the stairwell – and met a man hastening up who straightway betrayed his allegiance by reaching both hands to grab John by the throat. Sweeping his forearm round in a pugilist’s block, the clash hard enough to draw forth a yelp, he silenced the man with a straight left palm to the mouth, knocking him down the stairs. He followed fast, but though the man tumbled, he still managed to grab John’s legs as he tried to jump him. He fell, hard, caught himself on his hands, got a leg free and kicked back, encountering he knew not what; but the result was a cry, and a slackening of grip. John was free of it and through the door.
He headed straight down Maiden Lane, aware of shapes following him fast from each side of the playhouse. These did not hue-and-cry him. They had their own reasons for taking him silently and without the interference of citizens or the watch – which thought added speed to his legs. He wove, ducked, threading through the people. Yet the crowd was not thick, for so many were within the places of entertainment.
London, he thought, running fast. Southwark was but a suburb, half country, too open to lose himself in. The city was a badger’s sett, looping streets like tunnels so closely did the house’s jutties conjoin. With lanes and alleys that twisted into darkness, thronged with crowds that lurched from taverns for drink to ordinaries for vittles, and between them every sort of business. Perfect cover. And he was decided – he would not go abroad. A night hidden and he’d creep with the dawn to the Bell Inn near the cathedral, where Stratford’s carrier and Shakespeare’s friend, William Greenaway, kept horses for hire. Three days to Will’s birthplace, two more to Much Wenlock, if he did not take it at an Essex-like pace. His family home. It still had a priest hole from when his stepfather was a Jesuit. Sanctuary.
Yet first he had to cross the Thames. He nearly swerved to Paris Garden Stairs, thought better of it. He could hear the pursuit, in boot heels upon the cobbles, close behind. He was ever fast – like his father had been, his mother had once told him – and fancied himself in a foot race. But to pause and discuss a fare with a boatman? No. He kept going straight . . . towards London Bridge.
It would be crowded, as always. A narrow street and a hundred shops, each with their customers before it. A thicket within which any fox could lose the hounds.
He slipped between the stone columns of the churchyard of St Mary Overies. There were bookstalls there, but few buyers – Southwark catered more to loins than brains. He crossed the yard swiftly, and as he exited, turning on to the bridge’s approach, the church bell tolled three. Back at the Globe, Caesar would be falling to conspirators’ daggers – while ahead and above him the reward for conspiracy could be clearly seen.
John did not pause to study the traitors’ heads affixed to spikes on the gate tower, just pushed through the gawkers, under the arch and on to the bridge itself. He did cross himself, as his stepfather the lapsed Jesuit had taught him – a warding gesture against the fate of traitors impaled above him. It had never seemed to press him so closely.
He could not run, the crowd prevented it. But neither could his pursuit, and he risked a glance back while moving forward. Hard to tell at first in that impelling crowd. Then he saw Waller, a head taller than most, as John was. Thirty paces back only. Maybe less. Close enough for their eyes to lock. Turning forward again, John sought avenues through the press, little shifts of flesh to glide through. The crowd thickened, both man and beast, for horses were being ridden or pulled wagons, dogs ran free or were attached to carts, sheep were loose and harried forward by collies. J
ohn moved through them all, content with his steady progress. Unless his pursuers drew swords and began hacking, they could not clear a path any faster than he. Thirty paces clear on the city side and he’d have three alleys to choose from, each as twisting as the next. One led to an especially low tavern that John would sometimes frequent – the Flounder’s Head, hard by the Billingsgate market. He’d slip inside, order an ale and be sipping it as Cecil’s men passed by.
There was a house about a third of the way across, more ornate than any other, a confection in wood, with domes and curlicued gables, spires that would have suited a miniature cathedral, its frontage decorated with balconies and alcoves, these occupied by Greek gods and heroes, gilded statues shining in the sun. Its pieces had been brought whole from Holland and assembled in place with naught but wooden pegs. It was renowned, he had brought Ned to stare at it many a time . . . yet for the life of him he could not remember its name! Such forgetfulness was happening to him often of late.
He’d been looking up. He should have been looking ahead, for he slapped into a back, strove to slide around it, was blocked by another and yet a third. Progress was halted and voices now surpassed the cries of pedlar and hawker. Human, demanding the way be cleared; and animal, a sudden loud braying, its ‘Eee-aw! Eee-aw!’ an ascending note of frustration and pain. John managed to slip past a few more bodies before he was halted entirely. Close enough to see over heads to the obstruction.
An ass cart was stopped right under the house’s narrow archway. The ass was rearing up in its traces and the driver was standing before it, tugging on its reins with one hand and punching it in the muzzle with the other. ‘Move, you damnable wretch,’ he cried, landing blow after blow. His accent was distinct – and Irish. An unfortunate one to have in the summer of 1599, with another English army failing across the water.
‘Clear the way, you bog-trotter,’ came a London voice, immediately joined by a dozen more, all heaping various insults upon the man’s person and country. He realised his error, gaped at the crowd around him and, in a panic, began redoubling his punches upon the beast’s nose. It produced no effect but a shying and a bucking, and the cart shifting a little backwards into packed people, who cried out. John knew it wouldn’t. About the only thing that would was to shove a sword point into the ass’s arse.
Punches, insults, brays continued. John looked about him, seeking a way; looked back to the crowd packed as tightly behind him. Saw again the officer, who saw him and, seeing, started to shout. His voice, battlefield trained, rose above even that babel.
‘By the command of her majesty – clear the way for her officers! Clear the way!’
It had an effect. People turned to look back. Seeing a sword raised, and determined men driving forward, the crowd shifted again, squeezing whatever way it could, which was little enough. John looked about, seeking any avenue. Ahead, men were climbing up on to the cart, the Irishman leaving his blows to remonstrate with them. There was a slight giving, and he found himself picked up by the surge, carried to the side, and finally flung against a fantastically carved door. Surprisingly it gave – and he tumbled over its threshold. Stairs were before him, shouts of ‘Clear the way’ closer behind. He had no choice. Thrusting up from the floor, shrugging off the men who’d pushed him in, he took the stairs two at a time.
Shouts doubled behind – and one came before. ‘What make you here?’ yelled a man on the landing above, spectacles on his nose, a quill in his hand. The house belonged to some trading company, that much John remembered; the young fellow, with brown hair falling on to his wide white collar, would be a merchant or his secretary. John climbed towards him. ‘I would be obliged, sir,’ he panted, ‘if you would show me a way out.’
‘A way out? It is the same as the way in. Take it, varlet.’ He shook his quill in John’s face. ‘Take it now!’
In the street, the officer’s voice rose above brays and blows. ‘Your pardon, sir,’ said John, ‘but I cannot.’ Brushing aside both quill and its angry wielder, he discovered that the landing led to another stair, then a corridor, which had to pass over the arch below, with doors either side and one ajar at its end. He rushed through that, into a room with desks, thick leather-bound tomes on shelves, windows on three sides. Another door, open, revealed a descending stair. But before John took it, and despite the continuing rebukes of the clerk who’d pursued him, he came back into the room and went to the window that faced the Southwark shore. The glass was leaded but not too thick; he could see down to where figures milled. Indistinct, but he could make out that several wielded swords.
Both exits blocked. He went to the only other – the window that gave on to the river. He could smash it, he supposed. But he’d swum in the Thames in February and did not fancy another dip. Moreover, he could see by the foam that the tide was turning, gushing between the narrow stone arches of the bridge. Experienced boatmen would not attempt it now. Wild youths would dare the race in skiffs, and many had died doing so. He was a good swimmer – but drowning was the best chance that way.
John turned to the door and the only option left. As feet pounded on the stair opposite, he undid his buckler’s straps. Grasping its leather grip, he slipped his sword from its sheath.
The clerk was still in the room, shouting at him. He chose not to listen, to focus instead on the man about to come through the door. When he did, John attacked him.
There was no room for anything indirect. Simple usually worked best anyway, especially allied to surprise. The guard – it was not the officer John had encountered before – yelped as John ran at him, brought his own weapon to guard . . . too late. With a sharp flick of his right wrist, John knocked the blade aside even as he continued his run forward, following through with his left, his buckler hand, driving the small shield into the man’s face, knocking him down and, John suspected, out. He did not pause to check, leapt the falling body, was in the corridor beyond the next instant.
Two men were there, both drawn. Rapiers, each with the balancing dagger in their other hand. The briefest flash of a man came into John’s mind – George Silver, the master swordsman and advocate of the superiority of English weapons over Italian. Had he written in his treatise of a fight in the confined space of a corridor? If not, John knew he had at least written what he practised now. ‘Aaargh!’ he yelled, charging forward, sword whipped over his head to make the steel sing. The first guard gave back immediately, trying to find room for his longer blade – a mistake, as John was already running and closed the distance fast, stepping inside the man’s guard. The dagger came up, John deflected it on his buckler, flicked his blade tip to the ceiling and smacked his sword guard straight into the man’s nose. He fell, poleaxed but alive, John hoped. He knew he mustn’t kill anyone here. He was in trouble enough. And the Tyburn brand on his thumb urged restraint.
The second man had stepped away from his friend’s fall, taken guard. John now saw it was Waller, the officer who had sent him ale in Lollards’ Tower. Cecil’s man, with no kindness in his eyes now. ‘Surrender, Lawley,’ he shouted. ‘There is no fleeing from here. I have many men below.’
‘Then summon them all, for I will pass!’ John used the moment of shouting to take hanging guard and assess his opponent’s stance. Waller knew his trade, sure; there was a lot of sharp steel between John and his man and thus between him and escape. Considering that if he triumphed he would have to tell Silver just how, he attacked.
His downward chop with his sword was avoided, the points of steel opening and admitting them like gates, closing behind, an immediate thrust forward that had John ducking to save an eye. He was still too far out and so at the advantage of the rapier’s reach. Since he was low already, he stayed so as he gathered forward fast, buckler raised above his head like a legionary in a testudo, feeling the rapier sliding along it as he advanced. But the officer was retiring as swiftly, his dagger low and pointed at John’s face, seeking to hold him off till he could withdraw his rapier and thrust again. The narrowness of the cor
ridor forced John to pull his sword back, not swing wide into a cut as he would have liked. Swords paralleled each other’s movements, neither man sure who would gain position first.
Yet John had one other advantage – the rapidly approached stair. His opponent, aware too, paused, then, in his hesitation, slapped his rapier atop the still raised buckler. Ah ha, John thought, flicking his wrist the fraction he needed. He was falsing, looked like he was preparing for a belly lunge when, already low, the knee could be struck on a lunge. A cut only, some pain and blood, no more, move past . . . and have the advantage of height on any other man as he charged down the stairs.
Yet in that tiniest moment between thought and action, it was over. Something thumped, and hard, into the back of his head; a voice came clearly. ‘There, whoreson dog! That will teach you to invade my home!’
John fell. As he did, Waller stamped on his blade, close to the hilt, driving him faster down, since he refused to let it go, before it snapped from his grasp and his head bounced into the wood-tiled floor.
The blows did not drive him straight into oblivion; the descent into darkness was slower and he was able to note a couple of things: the book that had felled him, thick as a butcher’s forearm, landing beside his fading eyes – an irony which perhaps his friend the playwright could make something of, that John Lawley was, in the end, laid low by words; the conversation of men walking away backwards, debating between gaols. Yet a different thought accompanied him into the final darkness; a word. For he finally remembered the name of the house in which he was lying, the one with such fantastical carvings.
‘Nonsuch,’ he mumbled, or perhaps he didn’t. Same as the palace where he’d seen a queen naked. The one he’d fled only the morning before to avoid being taken was where he was taken.
Will could doubtless make something of that irony, too.
XXVIII
Consequences
The waking was as hard and cold as the stones he lay upon. Darkness held him, unrelieved no matter how wide he opened his eyes. He was in a cell but did not bother to explore its extremities beyond the wooden door. There was nothing he could do in a windowless vault except wait and hope that this was not the end of his journey but a pause along the way. Not that shortest of pauses either, the one before the gibbet walk.