Martin Stephen - The Conscience of the King

Jane was dressed as a housewife. It was always a worry how to disguise her. Even the worst clothes did little to hide the bloom and leanness of her figure, and the high cheekbones, sparkling eyes and lift to the chin made her a beauty however much soot was rubbed into her face.

Gresham and Mannion followed immediately behind Jane. Two of their men were stationed in front, two at either side and two to the rear. It was easier to train men to kill than to train them to accompany and guard their master and mistress without seeming to do so. It required intense concentration, as well as the ability to appear nonchalant when every nerve was straining.

Blackfriars was down The Strand and along Fleet Street, then over the stench of human and animal sludge that had once been the Fleet river. There was not one London, but several. A man who fitted into the hectic bustle of Fleet Street would be out of place among the weavers and cobblers of St Giles in Cripplegate, or the whores of Cheapside. Masons, however, went everywhere there was stone to chip, carve and repair.

The noise and bustle was immense. Everywhere the dust rose and clogged nostrils, put little icicles into eyes and caused the well-bred to walk with a handkerchief across their faces.

Everywhere there were people trying to sell things, shouting out the value of their wares. Everywhere was the incessant building that seemed to be going on across all of London. The wooden scaffolding jutted out into the streets, where wagons, coaches and horses vied for what little space there was. Its own people filled its» medieval walkways to overflowing, yet there was always more. London's teeming thousands needed feeding, and with every month that went by the city seemed to suck in more and more farm carts.

Mannion went to check with his look-out, who had alerted him that Shakespeare had been seen entering his rooms an hour earlier. 'He's still there,' said Mannion.

Hie gatekeeper was an old man, half asleep after his dinner. He woke to full consciousness with a start as Mannion banged on the half open door to his tiny lodge.

'We're 'ere to see Master Shakespeare. Master William Shakespeare. Some'at about some stone work he needs doin' up.'

'What you got that there with you for?' enquired the gateman, leering at Jane. She had rubbed her eyes hard and placed fresh spring water in them a few moments ago, blinking it out and over her cheeks. She looked as if she had been crying hard.

'Why, that hussy!' said Mannion, with feeling. 'If you'd a' seen where I had to drag 'er out from, you'd know why she ain't getting out my sight 'til I get her home! It's a trial in times like these, bein' a father and with no mother alive to keep her in order, I tell you!'

'Goin' to spank her, are you, when you gets 'er 'ome?' said the gateman, licking his lips and grinning like an aged satyr, at Jane. 'Thrash her, are you? With a belt, an' all?'

Mannion was nearly knocked off his stride. His glance caught Gresham, who was frantically trying to contain the laughter threat' ening to explode inside him.

'Oh, sir, he will, an' that!' Jane's accent was an excellent imitation of Middlesex, "e's so cruel to me, he is, so cruel… he beats me, he does, somethin' rotten.' She let her voice drain off into a pathetic snivel.

Good God, thought Gresham. Who needs to pay to go to the theatre? Let's just hope she doesn't start to strip off and show him her bruises…

'Ay, right then, up you go. Good luck to you. No time for these actors, me. Satan's chapel, that's what these theatres are. Satan's chapel.' The old man subsided into grumbling, though not without his gaze lingering lovingly on Jane's rear as they walked up the stairs.

They knocked on the heavy panelled door that Mannion had already established was Shakespeare's. There was silence. They knocked again, louder. A faint scrabbling could be heard from within. Gresham and Mannion exchanged a brief look, stepped back and in perfect unison drove with their feet at the place on the door that held the lock. It sprung open with a mighty crash.

When Gresham had first met him, Shakespeare, or William Hall, had been nondescript — medium height, medium build, medium everything. It was no bad thing for a spy to pass unnoticed. Even now, kneeling on the floor, hands raised in supplication, he was entirely forgettable. A bald pate with brown hair straggling on the side, a middle-aged paunch, the archetypal ageing prosperous merchant. How could the mind that wrote his plays be housed in a body of such drab normality?

Shakespeare had almost finished opening a hidden door in the heavy panels of the far wall as they burst in, an expression of sheer panic across his face. 'There's nothing I can do!' he shrieked now. '1 can't please you all! I don't have the papers!'

The gateman would be here any moment, calling out the watch. Jane stepped forward, knelt down beside the distraught man.

'Please,' she said quietly, 'we're here to help you. Not to harm you. Believe me. And send the gateman away when he comes.'

Gresham's heart went out to her. Most of the men he had worked with would not have recognised the danger the gateman posed without being told. Hardly any of them would have had the initiative to do something about it. Surely enough, clumping, urgent footsteps could be heard on the stairs outside.

Shakespeare looked into the most startling pair of dark eyes he had ever seen, housed in a face of such handsome proportions that it was guaranteed to take any man's breath away. 'No harm?' he asked pathetically. 'No threats?'

'No harm,' said Jane calmly. 'No threats.'

Shakespeare got up. 'It's all right, Ben,' he called out as the wheezing figure of the old man rounded the stairhead. 'Just a misunderstanding. These are… friends of mine.'

Ben looked suspiciously at the group.

'Well, I 'ope as 'ow they're better "friends" than some of those others you've 'ad comin' round 'ere these times. You sure? You don't need no 'elp?'

'I'm sure. Thanleyou. I'm sure.'

Ben left the way he had come, grumbling. Interesting, Gresham thought. The old man cared for Shakespeare, in his way. Servants — and particularly grizzled, perverted, cantankerous and liver-frazzled servants like Ben — cared for a very few people. Shakespeare must have something to command a residue of affection.

Shakespeare forced himself to look at Mannion. He is frightened he has made the wrong call, thought Gresham. This is a very scared man. Mannion saw the scrutiny coming. He stepped back, raised his arms, palms outwards. No weapons. No threat. It was a universal language.

The beating pulse in Shakespeare's neck began to subside. His doublet was of rich satin and velvet, copiously slashed. 'Do you close doors, as well as smash them to pieces?' he asked Mannion. Good, thought Gresham. There's wit there, at least, and a quick recovery. Gresham looked at the man's eyes. They were hooded, dark, as if a shutter was permanently closed over them. Normally Gresham gained a feeling for a person within minutes of their first meeting. Was there some strange smell, some ghostly aura invisible to the eye that passed between people? With Shakespeare he felt nothing. No sense of personality, no feel at all for what lay behind the exterior.

It was time for Shakespeare to know to whom he should talk.

'He does what I tell him,' said Gresham, 'usually. But he's no good unless he can smash something, sleep with it, eat it or drink it.*

'Then all he can do with me is the first. I doubt I'm his type in bed, and about the only thing no one's threatened to do to me recently is eat or drink me. God knows, they've tried everything else.' That wit again, with more than a note of tired resignation in Shakespeare's voice. He got up with Jane's assistance, and allowed her to help him to a chair. It was an expensive item, Gresham noted. Seasoned oak, with a high back and arms. A chair Robert Cecil would have been proud of. A rich man's chair. Even better, thought Gresham. The more a man had to lose, the more pressure could be brought to bear on him.