Rory Clements - The Queen's man

From the ramparts, he looked out over Sheffield. It was a fair-sized market town, renowned for making steel cutlery. He gazed all around for ten minutes, trying to work out the lie of the land. Below him was one of the rivers that formed a moat most of the way around the castle. Not far off, he saw the Cutler’s Rest, and thought briefly of Miss Whetstone. He would take a chamber there rather than here in this grim castle.

He turned away and looked to the north. Across the ditch, the castle keep where Mary lodged was raised high on its motte. Shakespeare studied the ancient earthwork and fortress for a few minutes, then made his way slowly back to the great hall. He had clearly missed the start of the midday repast, for the place was already as raucous as a lawyers’ dinner at Gray’s Inn. The table was packed with senior officers and administrators, eating, talking and laughing with abandon. At the table’s head, the earl was chewing at the wing bone of a fowl. At his left side sat a comely woman. Shrewsbury hammered the haft of his knife on the table. ‘Mr Shakeshaft, you will sit here beside me,’ he boomed across the hall. All eyes turned to Shakespeare. ‘Have you met Mistress Britten?’

Shakespeare bowed, not bothering to correct his name. So this was the earl’s pastry cook, Elinor Britten. Walsingham had told him of her. She smiled at him and pushed forward her large bosom in welcome and the image of an appetising apple pie came to mind. No wonder the countess, Bess, had absented herself from the marriage bed. She was at Hardwick Hall with her young grand-daughter Arbella Stuart, and was said to be in a towering rage that her husband had taken this wench as his mistress.

‘Good day to you, Mr Shake speare ,’ Elinor Britten said, laughing. ‘You see, I know your name even if my lord does not. He is most forgetful these days. With that and the gout and the prattling, one could imagine him a feeble old man soon. We shall have to feed him potage with a babe’s spoon.’

‘Enough of that, Mistress Britten! How can a man be old when he has a warm woman in his bed to keep him up? Do I not rise and crow when duty calls?’

Elinor graced his lordship with a tolerant smile, then turned back to their guest. ‘Please be seated, Mr Shakespeare.’ She swept her plump pink hand in the direction of the bird in the centre of the table. ‘Have you tried ptarmigan? It is really quite delicious. One of Mary’s men had a dozen sent down in cages from his estates in Scotland for us. I think it has the flavour of swan. It is a fine royal roasting bird.’

Shakespeare was astonished at the manner in which the earl’s bed companion flaunted their relationship. He was just about to reply when the room fell silent. All eyes swivelled to the doorway and Shakespeare turned to see what they were looking at.

A dark shadow of a man stood there, the light of the sun behind him. All Shakespeare could make out was the whiteness of his hair, like a demonic halo, and the heavy stick that he held in his right hand.

‘Ah, Mr Topcliffe,’ the earl bellowed. ‘How went the chase?’

‘Too simple, my lord, too simple. No sport at all.’

‘And poor eating.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Step forward, sir, and say well met to our guest. His name is Mr Shake speare. There, I have it, Mistress Britten.’

Richard Topcliffe strode forward, tapping his blackthorn stick at every third step, and Shakespeare now saw him clearly. From his skin and strength, he looked fifty or so, yet his hoary white hair was that of a man many years older. He was not tall, but he emanated a brutish power. He was grinning through yellow-brown teeth which, rather oddly, matched the colour of his marigold silk doublet. Shakespeare wondered exactly what manner of work he did for Walsingham.

‘Mr Topcliffe,’ the earl continued when the white-haired man came to a halt. ‘I am pleased to introduce you to Mr Shakespeare who has letters of introduction from Mr Secretary.’

Topcliffe stood square like a mastiff at bay. ‘If you are Walsingham’s man, then you are indeed well-met, Mr Shakespeare.’ His voice was a dark and unpleasant syrup. ‘Any friend of Mr Secretary is an enemy of the Antichrist, and so you must be my friend, too.’

Shakespeare was surprised. Was this truly one of Mr Secretary’s men? ‘It is my honour to meet you, Mr Topcliffe.’ He proffered his hand, but it was not taken. Instead Topcliffe slapped his blackthorn into the palm of his own left hand. It had a heavy silver grip and the dark wood tapered to a narrow tip which was also wrought in beaten silver. There was something of the cudgel about it.

‘Good, then let us eat, for the hunt has made me as hungry as a hog.’

‘What was the game, sir? Stag? Boar?’

‘No, no, the finest chase of them all. Topcliffizare! Priest-hunting — and I smoked me out a fine one, a boy-priest, hiding in a coffer among women’s undergarments. Christ’s fellow cowering in a coffer and shaking as though he had the ague! Did he think I would not look there? Well, soon we shall have him in his traitor’s coffin — with worms not petticoats for company.’

Topcliffe roared with laughter at his own jest, and some of those present joined him politely. They had all ceased their own conversations to attend the words of this man, as though he held some power over them. He pushed his way forward on to the bench into the place that Shakespeare was about to take, with Shrewsbury at his left hand. He then elbowed the neighbour at his right sideways to allow a little space for Shakespeare. ‘Come sit by me and tell me news of the court.’

Shakespeare hesitated. Opposite him, Elinor Britten smiled and gestured towards the tiny space between Topcliffe and the diner on his right. ‘Push and squeeze, Mr Shakespeare. We have no courtly daintiness here. Push and squeeze. Take us as you will, sir.’

As he ate a leg of ptarmigan, which was every bit as good as Elinor Britten had promised, Shakespeare began to notice a stink. It came not from the food, but from the man at his side with the white hair. At first he could not identify the smell. It was partially sweat, partially the rancid dirt of a man who wore fine clothes but neither washed nor perfumed himself. Smoky, too, as though he had been too near a bonfire. But there was something else, something unholy. And then he realised what it was. It was the stench he knew from Bladder Street in the city of London, as you approached the shambles; the smell that greets the beast at the slaughterhouse on its final journey and drives it into a cold panic with fear. The smell of spilt blood.

Shakespeare gagged and could not swallow his meat. Surreptitiously, he put a hand to his mouth, but his right-hand neighbour, a young squire, noticed his discomfort and handed him a tankard of ale. Shakespeare drew down a deep draught and caught his breath.

‘A bone in your throat, Shakespeare?’ Topcliffe demanded.

No, your stink in my nose . He breathed deeply, regaining his composure. ‘Something of that ilk,’ he said.

‘Take care. It is most discourteous to die while men are at their meat.’

‘I have never died at the table yet.’ He managed a smile. ‘You mentioned a priest, Mr Topcliffe. What priest is that?’

The white-haired man looked at him for a moment as though he were not sure he wished to be asked such questions. ‘Why are you here?’

‘As his lordship said, I have been sent by Mr Secretary.’

‘You have papers?’

Shakespeare dug into his doublet and pulled out the sealed paper addressed to Topcliffe.

Topcliffe read it carefully, and then stared into Shakespeare’s eyes. ‘Well, then, I can tell you that the priest was a sodomising traitor and he will suffer a traitor’s death. He says his name is Cuthbert Edenshaw and that is all he will say. But I know him to be a priest ordained at Rheims and sent back here by the devil’s turds that inhabit that sink of wickedness. I shall have him racked in the Tower, and then we shall have the truth from him. And names. We shall have the name of every traitor he has met.’