Shakespeare's Rebel

  ‘Do you know, as I watched the fight above – the only good aspect of a dismal evening – I wondered if you had had a hand in it. Then fell to thinking how I could not find you, though I have had men searching for you this little while.’ He nodded. ‘Your appearance is the first good omen I have had in an age – I can only guess at the evil conjunctions in the horoscope that Magister Simon Forman is drawing up for me e’en now. Like the hunter of the heavens, the hound Sirius gambols at my heel. Dog days indeed, Master Lawley. Dog days!’

  Like many – and John was not of their number – the earl set much store by the movements in the heavens. ‘Indeed, my lord? Well, I am certain you are wanted above, while I . . .’

  Essex stepped forward, grabbed John’s arm, halting his motion away. ‘Still, here you are, at least. My lucky token.’

  ‘Good to see you also, my lord. And looking so . . . well.’

  The other man had stepped into the faint torch spill that came from the banqueting hall. And what John had guessed at from his vantage in the minstrel’s gallery was confirmed close to. The liquor fat, stripped from him by custom of exercise before Cadiz, had returned all the heavier, jowls drooping behind a jaw on which the beard was now half grey ash, not all fire red. The tawny curls no longer needed forever flicking back, lying limp instead upon the high, damp forehead; while the eyes were bruised and bloodshot, vessels for the melancholy that had been clear in the earl’s sprawl during the play.

  He did not look well. The last time John had seen Essex was over a year before, on his release from the Tower, after his imprisonment there and in Spain. It had not been the happy reunion of old comrades. Neither man had been at his best – John with his prison pallor and thinness, Essex newly returned from the disaster of the Azores voyage and his failure to capture the Spanish treasure fleet, and thus far out of the monarch’s favour. Reacting as he always did, alternating frenzied bouts of drinking and drabbing – the lower the class of whore the better, it was rumoured – with weeks of fanatical prayer. John had encountered him in the latter phase, and had endured a rambling sermon on the salvation to be found in Christ’s mercy, with nary a mention of John’s salvation of Essex in Cadiz. He had been dismissed with a plea for abstinence and the reward only of a beautifully bound book of prayers – which John had sold straightway in St Paul’s Churchyard, getting heroically drunk on the proceeds.

  John had not born the man a grudge – as worthwhile hating a fox for his desire to eat chickens. He had simply kept from his way . . . and would remove himself swiftly again if only he could tuck himself back in his breeches and plead an excuse.

  ‘I look well?’ echoed the earl, as John fidgeted. ‘I? Man, I am beset with more maladies than Job.’ He scratched at the beard that thrust down from his face, stiff as a lath brush. ‘Yet I have risen from my sickbed to serve her majesty – and witness how she and her pygmy Cecil treat me!’ He jerked a thumb to the windows above. ‘They dub me “Hotspur” and laugh at me behind their hands. Mocking me within a play by your friend Shakespeare.’ He laughed, a mirthless sound. ‘Yet if they picked one, surely it should be his tale of Romeo. For have I not, within this mockery, been handed a poisoned chalice to drink from, its contents mixed for me by that same mountebank, that hunchbacked dwarf?’

  This rant, ending on a shout, had given John time enough to put himself away – and to calm his initial urge to flight. The earl had spun a web of spies near as wide about the realm and near as thorough as Cecil’s. That John had not been found, and blind drunk when so, was by fortune’s grace alone. He could hide no more. Best to deal with the inevitable here, and avoid its consequence later.

  ‘What is this poison, good my lord?’ John asked softly.

  The earl turned back. ‘Its name is Ireland,’ he replied, his voice as low, repeating the word like a keen over a gravestone. ‘Ireland. Ireland. It killed my father and, by God, it will kill me.’

  He gave a small sob, stepped away, his black cloak dissolving him again into darkness. After a moment, creaks came from the arbor bench, Essex falling upon it. John did not follow straight, just spoke. ‘Must you go, my lord?’

  ‘How can I refuse? I am the Queen’s Champion, Earl Marshal of England, foremost soldier in the land.’ The proclaiming voice lowered to a whisper. ‘Though the truth is also this: I must venture or I am ruined. I am impoverished, with debts too vast to number. I’ve spent my all in the Queen’s service and am no nearer her favour for it. Others are,’ he growled, ‘jackals who crowd her throne and prevent my drawing near. Keeping me away from my sweet Bess! Cecil, Raleigh and their packs of mangy curs.’ Suddenly he appeared in the light again, standing facing the windows where shadows shifted to lutes and tabors. ‘By the cross, I should charge up there now and cut my way through ’em all. Spit the bunch-backed toad on my rapier! It is he who offers this poisoned draught! Wanting me to drink. Willing me to fail. By Lucifer’s balls . . .’

  As long as John had known the man, he was ever like this – one moment so enervated he could barely rise from his daybed, the next so agitated he would charge a hundred men and mourn that he could not kill them all alone. But John had known him long, so now he stepped forward and carefully placed his hand over the other’s. ‘My lord,’ he said gently, ‘I warrant there is a better course.’

  ‘What course?’ The earl’s eyes rolled white, down to John’s hand on his, pressing blade back into scabbard. ‘Let me go! You dare to touch—’

  ‘The course, Robbie,’ John continued as gently, ‘is not to drink the poison. It is to go to Ireland . . . and return with the traitor Earl of Tyrone’s head upon your lance.’

  The soft tone, the name used only in the most private of moments, the command he’d once had on the younger man, all had their effect. The eyes ceased rolling, settling at last on John’s face. ‘The better course! Yes, Johnnie, yes. To return with victory’s wreath upon my brow.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Let the hunchback try to bar my way to my Bess’s sweet lap then. With the people hailing me in the streets as a returning Caesar? As Henry the Fifth of glorious memory?’ He stared above again, seeing his glory, then looked back at John. ‘And yet,’ he said, his voice softening again, ‘so many others have failed before me. Not only my father, who left his bones there. Every commander since.’

  John smiled. ‘The greater glory yours then, my lord, when you do what even Sir Walter Devereux, of illustrious memory, failed to do. And meantime, avenge his death in rebels’ blood.’

  He watched the face transform again. Father and son, he thought. Honour and revenge. A mixture for a chalice more potent than even Sir Robert Cecil could concoct.

  ‘By the helm of Mars,’ the earl exclaimed, ‘you have hit it there, John Lawley.’ He reached up to scratch his beard, now with vigour. ‘Yet Ireland is a quagmire, and its inhabitants barbarous. It is not like fighting the hidalgos of Spain, who live in cities they would defend and whose honour bids them fight you face to face. The Irish have no honour, nor any city worthy of the title. We have the only one, Dublin and the smallholdings around it, a few fortified places beyond. The rest is a wilderness of moor and mountain, swathed in the foul mists from which they slink to attack a patrol here, murder a sentry there, bleeding the army drop by drop. Waiting for the foul contagions of their bogs to sicken every second soldier.’ A huge sigh shook him, and then the voice grew stronger. ‘Yet if I were to march into his heartland, lay waste to his land, ravage it and his people till they cry out for relief – and force Tyrone to a pass of arms? What then?’ He gripped John’s hand. ‘S’wounds, what if he would meet me alone and armoured under our armies’ eyes, to try the cause in single combat? Nay, he is older than me; aye, and I am Champion of England.’ Essex tipped back his head and laughed. ‘Then let him send five champions, one after the other or all at once, I care not. I’ll take them on, yea, and beat each one too!’

  The colour of his beard might have changed – but the man himself had not. Give him a sniff at blood and solitary glory, John tho
ught, and he will take on the armed world and damn all odds, just as at Cadiz. ‘My lord, that is the spirit that wins wars.’

  ‘It is. Yet Tyrone is known to be as cunning and as devious as . . . as that crouchback who stands between my Bess and me.’ He nodded up to the lights of the hall, then turned back. ‘I will need a force equal to its task. I will need an army worthy of the name. Not a rabble of . . . what was it that Falstaff said tonight? Something of . . .’ Essex stood straight, one arm aloft, in the pose of the player, ‘ “of slaves ragged like Lazarus, revolted tapsters and ostlers, trade fallen”?’

  ‘He did indeed, my lord. And may I say, well spoken!’

  The arm chopped down, then flew up again. ‘Out on such rogues!’ he yelled. ‘For I will have the cream of England’s warriors! The noblest captains that e’er drew steel.’

  ‘Drawing only for you!’

  ‘The gunners who sank the Great Armada . . .’

  ‘Storming again!’

  ‘Musketeers who shattered the legions in Cadiz.’

  ‘Rallied once more to your standard,’ John called.

  The earl stepped forward, his hand dropping on to the other’s shoulder. ‘And I will have you, John Lawley. I will have you.’

  When hell freezes over, John thought, but said, ‘Yours in the ranks of death as ever, good my lord.’

  He was grasped, hugged. Essex was as tall as he, which was tall, and that blunt beard prickled his ear like a blackthorn hedge. The voice was moved by tears. ‘John, Goodman John. We march together again to war!’

  ‘Yes, my captain.’ John unclasped, stepped away, took a breath. ‘Indeed I yearn for that hour when I will, with all speed, follow you to Ireland.’

  ‘Eh?’ Essex, all smiles, now frowned. ‘Follow?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. You spoke of an army worthy of your cause. So I will to my own county to raise a regiment for the fight.’

  ‘’Twill be good to have some Cornishmen in our ranks. Doughty fighters sure.’ Essex’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yet can they not be sent for? I would want you warding my back as ever from the muster.’

  A small confidence sometimes helped. ‘There are some . . . troubles that I must settle first, my lord. A, um, private matter.’

  ‘Oh, I have heard.’ Essex instantly changed. He grinned. ‘Tess has grown weary of your drunkenness, has she not? When will you heed the warning in Ecclesiastes: “For wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging.” ’

  ‘Proverbs, I venture, my lord, chapter twenty, verse—’

  ‘And she has settled instead on a certain fat knight to give her what you could not?’

  John shook his head. This was not a conversation he wished to be having. ‘My lord, she was gently born . . . as you know, your own lady’s gentlewoman . . . and aspires to a title other than . . . than mistress of the tavern that your lady wife so kindly advanced sums for. Um . . .’

  He trailed off. But the gleam had not left Essex’s eye. ‘I tell you this, my good servant. When I raise my standard, all my followers must rally straightway to it – and all private matters must be put aside. That same Sir Samuel D’Esparr wears my colours, while his estate is mortgaged . . . to me!’ The grin widened. ‘Thus he cannot marry without my permission. And I will not let any man marry when the coming chance may make his bride his widow. War and its hazards will perhaps leave Tess with . . . different choices, hmm?’ He nodded, a touch of grimness to it. ‘Many a man’s fate awaits in Ireland. Mine. Tyrone’s. Yours. Despair’s.’

  John could only nod, speech a faculty now lost to him. Essex had a way of surprising him – as now, proposing that Death choose between Tess’s two suitors. He needed to think. By all the saints, he needed to drink! Surely one tot of aqua vitae, to aid in discovering a path through this thicket, would not go amiss?

  And then he was spared the need for answer or argument.

  Yells came from the stable yard. One of them he knew instantly, as a father goose always will recognise its young. ‘Unhand me,’ Ned Lawley cried. ‘I will not go. Help, ho! Kidnap!’

  Sketching the minimum of bows, John was already on his way to the stable door. ‘My lord, my son calls. I must go to him.’

  ‘Stay!’

  John turned on the shouted command – to witness Essex draw his sword. ‘As you to Ireland next week, so I with you now,’ the earl cried, waving steel. ‘Lead, comrade, and I will follow.’

  ‘My lord, I do not think . . .’ He broke off as more shouts came, the players involved now. Wondering briefly at the wisdom of appearing with a drawn Earl of Essex in the yard of Whitehall Palace, John rushed through the stable and out the other side.

  VIII

  Tug Before War

  The scene had changed.

  It was still lit by a brazier. Yet instead of this being surrounded by imbibing players celebrating a season’s end, two armed gangs now faced each other across the flames. On one side stood the Chamberlain’s Men, some with cudgels hefted. On the other stood Sir Samuel D’Esparr’s three louts, rapiers drawn, with the knight himself in their midst holding a writhing Ned by the collar. A screen of the palace guard was between John and the confrontation, the men leaning on their pikes. No doubt they considered it like the recently performed play their betters had watched above.

  John hesitated. To draw himself would lead almost inevitably to a fight and some stabbings. And then he realised that course was not open to him – he’d forgotten his sword in the garden. So how to extricate Ned, whose eyes beseeched him, without bloodshed?

  However, there was another man with steel already out, one who rarely hesitated. ‘What is this outrage?’ cried the Earl of Essex, bursting through the guards. ‘Men with blades bared – in the Queen’s yard?’ He turned to the corporal in charge of the guard and slapped his shoulder plate. ‘This is treason! This is rebellion! Why did you not bar their way? Why do you not arrest them?’

  The soldier winced, under further blows and furious words. ‘They said they was with you, milord. Your men. They wear your colours.’

  ‘My colours?’ The shout would have raised the dead and certainly filled the busy yard. It probably carried to the palace above, which may have been the intent. Robert Devereux had the stage and he was going to fill it. ‘You think that I – I! – would bring rebellion into her majesty’s presence, broach’d on my sword? I, her most loyal slave?’ He strode forward, swept his rapier against Tomkins’s, ringing steel. ‘Put up, ye dogs, put up!’ Essex swivelled. ‘And you, Despair? You dare to claim that you carry out this abduction in my name?’

  The fat knight wilted, as his men hastily sheathed. Ned slipped away and ran to John’s side, rubbing his neck. ‘Not ab-abduction, my lord. And may I say it is . . . D’Esparr,’ he bleated.

  ‘You dare to correct me . . . twice!’ The earl thrust his face close to the other’s, spittle flying. ‘I have a mind to disclaim your allegiance to me and exile you from my regard.’

  ‘Oh please, my lord, do not do so!’ D’Esparr was bending so low now he had resolved into a large tangerine-tinted footstool. ‘I only came to fetch what is mine.’

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘My – my son, my lord.’ A sausage finger was raised, pointed.

  The earl turned. ‘This boy? I know this boy. He stands before his father, my most loyal servant, John Lawley. I know his mother.’ He turned back. ‘You are not married to her.’

  ‘We are plight-trothed, my lord, and—’

  ‘It is not the same thing. It is a prior contract and not a contract itself.’

  ‘’Tis true, my lord,’ a gentler voice intruded. ‘Indeed the only contract that exists is the one between the youth and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. For Ned Lawley is apprenticed to us.’

  All turned to look at the speaker, William Shakespeare. It was news to many there, for Ned was on trial and had not yet signed his articles. But John, as all the other players did, kept his face blank while Will continued. ‘So if you would like to contest contracts, Sir Samuel, I am at your servi
ce. My family is one of the most litigious in the realm. It is why I draw lawyers so well.’

  A laugh came. D’Esparr gaped like a gaffed codfish. Yet before he could rejoin, Essex spoke again. His tone had become more reasonable. ‘Besides, Sir Knight, this is not the time to think of marital matters . . . but of martial.’ He nodded at the playwright. ‘An appropriate conjunction of words, Master Shakespeare, do you not think? You are at liberty to use it, if you wish.’

  ‘I am . . . indebted to your lordship.’

  Essex turned back. ‘Yes, indeed, D’Esparr. Tomorrow I issue the call to arms. And I do not want men to answer it, to prove their martial virtues on Erin’s fated green shores, who are forever casting lingering glances back to the marital bed.’ Like a dog with a bone, Essex worried the phrase – and then he looked back at John and winked. ‘No,’ he resumed, ‘leave off such soft thoughts till we have returned in triumph. And then’ – his eyebrows raised, a new light in his eyes – ‘let us have a wedding that befits a knight of my household.’ He beamed. ‘Which I and my countess shall, of course, attend.’

  Given that his dealings with him were mainly amidst the chaos of war, John could forget that the man was also a politician and could not have survived so long at court if his only weapons were bluster and bravado. He had frightened Despair, then dangled delight before him. Having the foremost couple in the realm at your wedding removed any stain there might be from a baronet marrying a tavern mistress, howsoever gently born. Yet the wink had showed something else – John Lawley, as enmeshed as his rival, both men flies now in Robert Devereux’s web.

  D’Esparr was not so foolish as to provoke further. He’d been given an expeditious exit from where his arrogance had led him. ‘My lord,’ he said, sweeping off his bonnet, ‘I shall in this, as in everything, obey you.’