Rory Clements - The Heretics

He wasn’t convinced. He knew Jane too well. She would never relax. The novelty of sitting at table, being waited on, would be simply too great.

‘Send Boltfoot to me, if you please.’

‘Sit down, Boltfoot,’ Shakespeare said. ‘Light your pipe.’

Boltfoot looked about him suspiciously, as though someone were trying to gull him.

‘I want to thank you for saving me, and I want to ask you once again about Mr Hooft. What did he say when he came to you?’

Boltfoot limped to the settle and sat down.

‘He said he had been following you, master. He had ventured to London, believing you might lead him to Sorrow Gray, the maid he was to have married. That is all he said.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘I thought it mighty strange, but most welcome. Without him, I would never have found you.’

Paul Hooft, short-trimmed beard, fair and austere, smiled stiffly at Shakespeare as he welcomed him to his abbey farm home on the edge of fens. The waters had receded now, leaving dry land where once there had been a sea.

Shakespeare did not smile back.

‘Can I offer you refreshment, sir?’

‘No, I am not staying.’

‘That is a great shame. I would welcome some company. We have much to talk about. Please, come through to my withdrawing room and sit awhile.’

‘No. I will stand here. I owe much to you, Mr Hooft. Not only did you save Mr Cooper and me from the flooded fens, but you led Boltfoot to the place where I was lately held captive. So I thank you twice over.’

‘It was my duty and pleasure, sir. For as I have said before, I owe my life and liberty to your great Queen and country.’

‘And yet there is much that I find troubling and puzzling-’

‘Mr Shakespeare, please, I am a simple soul. I was besotted with that woman and came to find her. I now know how wrong I was to follow you as I did. I should have come to you and told you my business straight. But I must thank the Lord that I was enabled to save your life.’

Shakespeare raised his hand. ‘Let me speak. I have been thinking long and hard about the role you have played and it seems to me there is only one conclusion to be drawn.’

Hooft frowned. ‘What are you saying, sir?’

‘You know very well what I am saying. When first we met you on the road near Waterbeach, there was a suggestion that you had come from Cambridge, where we spotted you at the Dolphin Inn. At the time we took you for a traveller, like us. Is that still your version of events?’

‘Why, yes, I always stay at the Dolphin when I am in Cambridge. I was there for my trade.’

‘Yes, you have told us of your business interests. You are a man of many interests. Farming, engineering, trading with the Low Countries.’

Hooft nodded.

‘But, Mr Hooft, I suggest your journey did not start at Cambridge, but in London. What do you say to that?’

Hooft said nothing.

‘I suggest not only that your journey started in London, but that you were following us all the time, and that was the sole purpose of your journey. I suggest, too, that you knew my name even before we met and that you knew where we were heading.’

‘Why would I have followed you? I do not understand what you are suggesting. I am a farmer and a trader, nothing more-’

‘But you have another interest: you are an intelligencer in the employ of the Dutch estates. You are engaged in espionage, sir. You may not be hostile, but you are still a spy. You are in the pay of a foreign power and have been trained in the role to a high degree. That is why I could never spot you, even though I knew I was being followed.’

Hooft shook his head, but it was a feeble, half-hearted denial.

‘You have not merely engaged in observing and reporting back to your masters, but have actively fomented religious dissent here in the East of England. I say, Mr Hooft, that you have caused unrest in the fens among the more severe Calvinist and Puritan elements. You have stirred up rabble-rousing outside Wisbech Castle and you have undermined public order in the commonwealth. You may have saved my life, but you did so because it suited you.’

‘Mr Shakespeare, everything I have done has been in the interests of England and Queen Bess.’

‘No, it has been in the interests of the Dutch estates. It is mere coincidence that our requirements correspond with yours at the moment. Whose side would you take in a dispute between our two nations?’

Hooft rose from his seat, his back stiffened in a pose of defiance. ‘This is preposterous. You come into my home and then accuse me of betraying you! Without me, you would be dead!’

‘Betrayal. Yes, that is the word I was looking for. How do you think the Queen or Sir Robert Cecil would react if I told them about your double dealings?’

‘They would thank me.’

Shakespeare snorted. ‘You would be fortunate to be thrown out of the country with your life. Her Majesty likes Calvinists even less than she likes the Church of Rome. Her friendship for the Dutch estates is a mere convenience: two peoples joining forces against a mutual enemy, Spain. Least of all does she like strangers disturbing the peace of her realm.’

As he spoke, Shakespeare saw something in Hooft’s face that he had not noted before — a sullen hardness. The soft features had been replaced by the ruthless, clever aspect of the assassin. Shakespeare had encountered many such men in his years as an intelligencer. Normally, he could spot the signs. Why, he had even seen them in Lucia Trevail. So why not in this man?

He stepped forward so that his face was a mere six inches from Hooft’s.

‘You are to leave England.’

Hooft did not back off. ‘This country is my home-’

‘No longer. You have two days to sort out your affairs and then you will be gone. I will come for you and accompany you to Tilbury, whence you will depart for the Low Countries aboard a vessel of my choosing.’

‘No, sir, this is wrong! I am a friend to England. I can do you much good service. I have already done you good service. I am your friend-’

‘Very well. If you are my friend, tell me the name of the man who ordered you to follow me.’

Hooft was silent. He bit hard at his lower lip.

‘If you fight me on this, Mr Hooft, then I shall bring the full force of the law against you.’

The Dutchman was breathing heavily through his locked teeth, like a dog at bay. ‘You do not know what you are doing, Shakespeare, nor who you are dealing with. I am God’s vessel.’

Shakespeare had had quite enough of people believing they were God’s instrument. His voice let slip his anger.

‘I could have you incarcerated in the Tower and questioned under duress until you told me what I wished to know. But I will not because I remain indebted to you for my life.’

‘ He wanted you dead.’ The words came out like the rasp of steel on flint. ‘I thought you might have value alive. He was right; I was wrong.’

Shakespeare’s body went rigid with anger. He might have many enemies, but only Richard Topcliffe, the Queen’s own torturer, a man so severe in religion that he would drain the blood of every Roman Catholic in England — man, woman or child — wanted him dead with such slavering intensity of purpose. The white dog had sworn to destroy Shakespeare and his family. So even behind the dank walls of the Marshalsea, he had wielded power. And now he was out, and free to do his worst again.

Shakespeare raised his right hand and pointed his finger at Hooft.

‘You are not God’s vessel, but Topcliffe’s.’

A fine pairing of zealots he and this hard-bitten Dutch intelligencer made.

‘You said the name, not me. He wanted me to ensure you brought Weston back to the Tower and execution, but you could not stomach it. And he wanted me to be there when you hunted down the papist whore Sorrow Gray.’ He snorted. ‘Mr Topcliffe will kill you rather than lose my services.’