Rory Clements - The Heretics

‘What do you know of him?’

‘Everything. This conspiracy will fail. You will all go to your doom. Release me. Save yourself.’

There was a pulse in her smooth brow. Her eyes narrowed. Carefully, she put down the beaker of water on a small table near by. Shakespeare saw the glint in her hand as a sailmaker needle slid from her sleeve into her palm. She raised it up and, with a scream that seemed to last a full minute, she plunged it down into his shoulder. The triangular point tore through skin and flesh until it hit bone. Shakespeare gasped with pain and his head arched back. She pulled the needle out, then stabbed it once more into his other shoulder. He gasped again. Blood streamed down his upper arms, chest and back in rivulets, a delta of scarlet, flowing over him.

She breathed heavily. Smoke spewed from her mouth and nostrils as she held the blood-streaked needle in front of his eyes. Her hand was shaking but her eyes were everywhere, as though watching a swarm of butterflies.

‘See how they fly, screaming from you? See how your demons fly at my tender touch? We shall cleanse you of your demons. They have claws, but we have God’s needle. God is mightier than you, mightier than the demons. You will tell me the truth before you die.’

He was utterly at her mercy. She was raving. And yet his thoughts were with Frank Mills and the rope from which he had failed to save him.

‘. . with this needle I shall pluck them all out like lice. I shall rid you of all your lewd devils. I am God’s instrument. At the end, when your body is free, you will thank us, for we will not have let you die in thrall to the beast.’

High in the church rafters, a dazzling phantasm swooped. Shakespeare caught its shadow in the periphery of his vision. Was it angel or demon? He looked up and saw that it was a trapped jay. It landed on a rafter, defecated, then shrieked.

Regis Roag sat at the front of the heavy draycart, whip in hand. His gaze seemed to be fixed straight ahead on the long dusty road, but he was watching constantly. He wore a cowl to conceal his face and ever-moving eyes, and to hide his fine head of hair. There was little chance of his being seen by anyone who could do him harm, but why take the risk?

The procession straggled for miles: horsemen and wagons as far as a man could see along the road south-west to the Palace of Nonsuch. Many of the wagons were the Queen’s own, carrying her immense wardrobe and furnishings. Many more belonged to the hundreds of nobles and others who made up the royal court. Yet more were those of the hangers-on. Wherever the wealthy gathered, they attracted traders, beggars, jugglers and minstrels, just as meat left out will swarm with flies.

Roag’s draycart was just one among many, trundling through the county of Surrey. It carried a striped pavilion tent and an array of playhouse costumes and props. His band of men either sat on the back or walked alongside the wagon. No one paid them any heed.

The journey here had been long and arduous, from a notion hatched in England, to the conspiratorial cloisters of southern Spain, and thence to the beaches of Cornwall. When Beatrice had entered his life, spouting her mad, half-formed ideas, he had not been slow to spot the potential.

‘With one stroke, we could destroy them all,’ she had said. ‘Ten minutes of blood in God’s name, and England will be saved.’

There was an elegant simplicity to her plan, but he had had to find the right men; he had had to find the right equipment. Her idea would not work without his exquisite attention to detail. Thanks to him, every obstacle had been bypassed or hurdled, every enemy removed. The recruitment of Ovid Sloth, with his terrifying debts and his contacts in England and Spain, had been the master stroke. It had been Sloth who had travelled to Toledo to commission the greatest of metalworkers to create the short, hard steel swords so neatly housed in their toy-like wooden frames.

All that was needed now was the extraction of a little information from a man named John Shakespeare and the way would be clear. Shakespeare was in good hands. The best of hands.

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. .

The priest at the high altar intoned the words as he made the sign of the cross. He wore the long white gown known as an alb. Over this he wore a purple stole and then the chasuble, a sleeveless mantle.

John Shakespeare sat bound to the chair, unable to move more than his head. He closed his eyes and mouthed the Lord’s Prayer, something he had not done for some time.

He could sense Beatrice Eastley behind him, and could smell the smoke of her burning tobacco. The dog’s baleful eyes never left him.

Even before the priest turned, Shakespeare knew that it was Ovid Sloth. Englishman, Spaniard, merchant, traitor, priest: a man of many parts. He waddled slowly down the nave and stopped in front of the chair, gazing coldly at the captive.

‘How do you know of Regis Roag?’

‘He is the son of a king. How should I not know someone of such stature?’

‘We are not here to make jest. Tell me how you know him. You mentioned such a man at St Michael’s Mount, and then you knew him when you saw him. What do you know? How, too, did your man Cooper know where I would be this day?’

‘Cooper? What do you know of Cooper?’

‘What does he know of me? How did he find me?’

‘We know everything about you. We all know of Roag, too, everyone who works for Sir Robert Cecil. Everyone in the office of the Earl of Essex. We knew he was coming to Cornwall. Do you think we would let such an enemy of the state enter the country unnoted?’

Since he had awoken in this malign place, Shakespeare had been thinking a great deal about the nature of Roag’s entry into England. He was certain now that he had not come alone, that he had brought a band of mercenaries.

‘We know exactly what he is about and whom he brought to England. We have spies aplenty in Seville and Sanlucar.’

‘Ah, yes, Robert Warner. A fine boy, by all accounts. Such a waste.’

‘Warner? What are you saying?’

‘Oh, I’m sure you know him. Knew him.’

‘God damn you, Sloth. God damn you all. We know all about you. You will never walk free in England again.’

Sloth recoiled.

‘He lies!’ Beatrice’s voice was a screech that echoed around the high vaulting walls of the old church.

‘But he does know Roag. And that concerns me. How does he know him? How did Cooper find me?’

‘It makes no difference. Regis can be anyone. You have seen him. He can transform himself. You know he can.’

Sloth ground his teeth so that the folds of his face quivered. ‘Regis insists we must find out how this man knows his name. Well, we shall discover the truth. Satan cannot withstand the power of God.’ He touched the corner of his purple stole to Shakespeare’s bleeding shoulder. ‘I do not like this man. I did not like him in Cornwall and I do not like him here. He is Satan’s creature. He has serpents and clawed minions of the beast in his belly. They must be exorcised. Just as the devil inside the body of England must be cast down into fiery damnation. What are the signs, sister?’

‘The chill air. He has no hunger. I see movement beneath the skin. Lesser demons have already flown. It is certain.’

Shakespeare struggled against the ropes. ‘This is not about God. This is about temporal power. You are no man of God, Sloth — and you, Beatrice Eastley, are nothing but an assassin. You killed the old nun, Sister Michael. I had thought she was one of you. Did she not approve of your vile designs? Did you fear she would betray you?’

Sloth, who was clutching a crucifix, made the sign of the cross on his own breast, then on the breast, brow and lips of Shakespeare, who violently averted his face from the perverse ritual.