Rory Clements - Traitor

‘Did you have no misgivings at this stage?’

‘Of course I did. But Thomas Heneage is a charming and most persuasive man. He told me that I would be helping England and my sovereign. I persuaded myself, too, that I would be doing Richard Hesketh a great favour.’

‘What happened next?’

‘On Heneage’s instructions, I sent a letter to Richard, explaining that I had been assured he would be forgiven past misdemeanours and would be allowed safe passage back to his wife and children in Lancashire. All he had to do was pick up a certain package at the White Lion in Islington and take it to his master at Lathom House. The letter was sent and I hoped for the best. Three months later, I heard that Richard had been arrested and was to be executed for treason. My blood ran cold, Mr Shakespeare, for I was responsible. Then, to compound my guilt, I discovered that the incriminating package had been handed over to Richard by Bartholomew Ickman, my former scryer, and I realised I had involved myself in something evil. Ickman would have known of my friendship with Richard Hesketh. I began to believe that he was behind the whole plot and gave Heneage the idea of using me …’

Dee hung his head.

‘Please continue, Dr Dee. Allow me to guess. You were so overcome with remorse that you vowed to look after Isabel Hesketh and her family with donations of money. You even went to her husband in his cell at St Albans, begged forgiveness and vowed that you would do this for them. You were the noble gentleman of whom she spoke to me.’

‘Did she tell you that?’ He nodded. ‘Yes, that was me.’

‘And you will be pleased to know that when I saw her, she was big with her husband’s child. It must be born now, so her need of money will be yet greater.’

Dee sighed heavily and shook his head with something approaching despair.

‘I still have no money for her. Heneage has not given me the living I was promised. That was why I was reduced to digging in a field in quest of Roman gold. That was why I was in Lancashire. My meeting there with Ickman was entirely coincidental. He was there on a mission to poison. Knowing the depth of my involvement, he happily boasted as much to me. “If we can’t get the traitor one way, we’ll do it another,” were the words he used. He told me more. He was full of it, how clever the plot was, how pleased Heneage and the Privy Council would be, what riches would be bestowed upon the Ickmans. I could bear to listen to it no more. That was when I went to Father Lamb and begged him to save Lord Derby. But it was too late by then, as you know. The earl had already been poisoned.’

‘What part did Eliska play in all this?’

‘We were friends in Prague. The next I knew of her was when she appeared at Lathom House. It was Ickman who told me how she had helped soften up Richard Hesketh to bring the earl his fateful letter. She had come to Lancashire, he said, to finish her work. She knew all my sins. On the night of your brother’s play, she was berating me. She suspected I had communicated something to Father Lamb.’

Shakespeare eyed the old doctor coldly. For a man of intellect, he was dangerously foolish. Not a man to trust with your friendship if he could be so easily swayed by designing men — and women. Poor Richard Hesketh must have been easy meat to the likes of Ickman and Eliska, and his own ambitious brother Thomas Hesketh.

And what of Michael Dowty, soon to be a Cecilian member of Parliament? His role was obvious: he fed his master the dish with the deadly mushroom, having pretended to taste it himself. Was this the England that Shakespeare had fought for all these years? He felt befouled by the whole dirty conspiracy.

‘You have great reason to feel shame, Dr Dee.’

‘It is true. I have nothing to say in my defence. No penitence or contrition will ever expiate my sin.’

Shakespeare was thinking hard. What was to be done about any of this? He stood up and began pacing, then stopped and nodded slowly.

‘You have done the right thing in coming to me this day. Will you speak all this in a court of law?’

The light drained from Dee’s eyes. He shook his head violently. ‘I cannot, Mr Shakespeare. No man could.’

‘Your immortal soul-’

‘No, not even for that. There is worse. Look again at the secret code in the verse.’

Shakespeare picked up the paper. ‘What, pray, am I looking for?’

‘It says, “Heneage used MD, EN, BI and TH to poison LD …” and then there are nine more letters, though only the first five of those need concern you: FORER.’

Shakespeare saw it straightway : for ER . For Elizabeth Regina. Her Majesty the Queen. If the letter was true, then the conspiracy could not go higher.

No, this could not be brought to a court of law. It had to be settled by other means.

Sir Thomas Heneage, son of a Lincolnshire landowner, was a man of immense charm. Some said he was the only courtier who managed to be friends with everyone from the Queen downwards. He even got on with Ralegh and could bridge the divide between the most bitter of rivals so that he was as much at ease in the camp of the Cecils as he was with Essex and the Bacons.

But above all, he was known as the truest friend of the Queen. Fiercely Protestant, he had caught Elizabeth’s eye in the earliest days of her reign and had remained close to her ever since.

He stood in the hall of Lancaster mansion at the Savoy to welcome John Shakespeare. His smile was warm and genuine and his words of praise for Shakespeare’s efforts on behalf of Queen and country were undoubtedly heartfelt.

Shakespeare had come here to this bend in the Thames by Westminster with deep antagonism in his soul. He had been ready to do violence to Heneage. Instead, he smiled back and thanked Sir Thomas for receiving him so quickly.

‘Sir Robert said you wished to see me. He has told me everything. Your fears and your suspicions. Let me tell you, John — if I may call you that, in friendship — that I am delighted to meet you again so that I may explain my side of the tale to you. You may not like me for it, but I believe you will respect me.’

‘Sir-’

‘Please, John, hear me out. I wish to say at first that I know the affection in which you were held by Eliska. If she loved you, as I believe, then I too must hold you dear.’

Shakespeare tried to interject again. ‘Sir Thomas, I have questions-’

‘And I have answers. What I tell you here in this room will explain everything to you, but you will never repeat it to any man or woman, and neither will I. Even Sir Robert Cecil does not know what I will tell you, for it would be unfair to compromise his integrity with such knowledge. You and I will maintain silence to death, for our sovereign, her realm and her Church. I will not ask you to make a promise to that effect, for I know it is unnecessary.’

‘Do you?’

‘I know you are a man of courage and honour. As I recall, we spoke before of the Bond of Association. Surely you signed it.’

Shakespeare shook his head. It had been placed in front of him by Walsingham but he had refused to sign it, for it was the rule of the mob. All those who signed the bond — and there were thousands, including the whole Privy Council — had made an oath to take instant vengeance on anyone conspiring to harm the Queen. No trial, just instant death. Summary justice. The bond had been drawn up by Walsingham and Burghley in 1584 in the aftermath of the Throckmorton plot and a year later was encoded into the law of the land. Walsingham had not been pleased by Shakespeare’s stance, insisting that it was his patriotic duty to sign, haranguing him in that cold, relentless way that broke so many men’s will. Shakespeare would have none of it.