Rory Clements: Prince

For a second or two, Shakespeare was shocked speechless. Then he was seized by an ungovernable fury. He lunged forward, but Bruce stepped back. ‘Don’t think I won’t kill you if needs be, Shakespeare. One death, two deaths, a hundred, I shall still sleep the same at night.’

Shakespeare breathed deeply. He looked at the Scotsman with diamond-hard contempt. ‘That was murder, Mr Bruce. Simple, calculated murder of an innocent boy. Is that what your king pays you for?’

‘What would you have done, Shakespeare? Lock him up in Tutbury, Chartley and Fotheringhay for twenty years like his mother? Then chop off his head when the plots surrounding him began to press? This is not just what my king wanted, this is what your Cecils wanted, too.’

Shakespeare was about to rage and argue, but the words he wished to say stuck in his gullet, for he knew that Rabbie Bruce spoke the unpalatable truth. Oh yes, the Cecils wanted this princeling dead. That had been their objective and desire all along. They would be happy at the events of this day.

He looked down once more at the corpse. Perhaps the young man was better off dead. He would never have understood the politics and warfare that would have swirled around him all his life. The hellburner on the Thames was none of his doing, yet it was done in his name. How many hundreds, thousands, would have died in the struggle to put him on the thrones of Scotland and England? For the Spanish and their Catholic supporters in England and Scotland, he would have been the perfect puppet king; utterly pliable, a man to wave to the crowds when commanded to do so, and leave the decision making to others.

Ana Cabral looked up at the man with the smoking gun. ‘I shall see you pay for this, Mr Bruce.’

He shook his head. ‘You will do nothing, senorita, except return to Spain. This is over. All done for.’

Sir Robert Cecil sat at his desk at his home in the Strand, just outside the city walls of London. The minutes passed in silence, except for the scratching of his quill as he deftly dipped the cut nib in ink and wrote at speed in his elegant, sloping hand. At his side stood John Shakespeare. Facing them were Jean de la Fin, Seigneur de Beauvoir-la-Nocle, King Henri IV’s ambassador to the court of Queen Elizabeth, and his son, Pregent de la Fin, Vidame de Chartres. The father stood stiffly, shoulders back, lips tight, bracing himself for this unpleasant encounter. The son was nonchalant, as if he would rather be anywhere else.

At last Cecil looked up from his writing. He addressed himself to the senior of the two Frenchmen. ‘I must now pass on to you the outcome of the deliberations of Her Majesty’s Privy Council. The councillors are, in a word, appalled. You have assisted a power hostile to England at a time when relations between your country and mine are, to say the least, exceeding delicate. Does your king know of what has passed on embassy property?’

‘No, Sir Robert, he does not. This was all our — my son’s — doing. I can do nothing but offer my sincere and humble apologies.’ As he spoke, in excellent English, he never once looked at the vidame, his son.

‘Do you think King Henri would be pleased to hear that his embassy has been implicated in a Spanish plot?’

‘He would have my head, Sir Robert.’

Cecil leaned back in his chair. The flicker of a smile passed his eyes and mouth, then vanished. ‘I have always liked you, Jean. I have thought that we saw eye to eye on many things.’

‘That is true, Sir Robert. I feel shame that my name — ’ and now he did look sideways at his son — ‘should be connected to such a conspiracy.’

‘Good. Then we can proceed. I have here written the terms which you must accept, without demur.’ He turned the sheet of paper so that the Frenchmen could read it.

‘Firstly, the vidame will return to France. You, Jean, will stay as ambassador. Secondly, you will make it your business to discredit all stories of this Scots prince. As far as you are concerned, as far as we are concerned, the man never existed. It was all a tale put about by the Escorial to sow the seeds of unrest in England. To that end, there will be no trial of the Cabral woman. She will be deported forthwith. Her plot very nearly succeeded. I do not know whether your son had any knowledge of the plan to destroy the bridge, but it is certain that he has dealt dangerously and treacherously. And so there is a third condition: the vidame will return the woman known as Black Lucy to her home in Clerkenwell, unharmed.’

‘ Non! ’ At last the vidame erupted. ‘No. I will not have it. The woman is mine. My property!’

Cecil’s voice stayed icily calm. ‘No, she is not yours. If you listen further, you will understand what is to happen. Mr Shakespeare, you know a little about horses and women, please explain to the vidame what we are offering.’

Shakespeare smiled. He had been looking forward to this. ‘You have a horse, a black Barbary filly named Conquistadora. You and your family also have extraordinary debts because Henri pays you nothing but promises, and you must fund your lavish embassy from your own depleted coffers. We will pay you a thousand sovereigns for the horse on condition that the woman is returned to us.’

‘The horse is worth twice that! And the Queen herself has pledged that I may have Monique back. As I kissed her hand and received the Golden Spur from her, she gave me her word that I could ask anything.’

‘Would you like me to tell Her Majesty what the French embassy has been involved in?’

The vidame turned his head aside contemptuously. ‘Then why do you not just make me an offer for the whore and leave me the horse?’

‘Because, monsieur, we do not buy and sell human flesh. A thousand sovereigns will buy you a stable full of fine horses in France. And a whore every night for ten years should you wish it. Take it. You have no option.’

The vidame’s face was suffused with rage. He glared at his father. ‘Are you party to this, Papa?’

‘There is no other solution, Pregent. This is not a matter for negotiation. If we do not accept, the English will inform Henri of your foolish collusion with these Spaniards and we will lose our heads. It is as simple as that.’

Cecil offered the quill to the two Frenchmen. ‘So, messieurs, if you will just make your mark on the paper, I believe we will have a contract.’

After the Frenchmen had gone, Shakespeare stayed. ‘I confess, Sir Robert, that I am much troubled. The role of the Scotsman, Mr Bruce. He was nothing more than a hired assassin.’

‘And yet you understand why King James thought it necessary to employ him?’

‘Was he, then, employed by James?’

‘The English paid him nothing. He was out of our control.’

‘But you allowed him leeway to operate on our land as he saw fit.’

‘We winked at it, nothing more.’

‘And what of Baines — or Laveroke?’

‘He has disappeared. It was believed he was heading for Scotland with a plan to murder James. Nothing has been heard of him since. Perchance, he was set upon by bandits.’

Shakespeare looked askance at his master.

‘This is a war, John. Men die in wars.’

‘I understand the heat of battle, Sir Robert. But there are times-’

Cecil put up a hand. ‘Leave it, John. Mourn your wife, do not grieve for some unknown palsied prince, now buried in an unmarked grave. Do not grieve for a murderer like Baines who, if God be just, now lies feeding the crows in some woodland ditch.’

‘And what of Marlowe? I know what happened to him.’

‘Do you? Then you know more than I do, and more than I wish to know. Whatever you believe you know, I do not wish to hear it from your lips and you do not wish to tell me, for I believe that to do so would heap much trouble on you and yours and many others. Suffice it to say that whatever the reason Marlowe was in that room, he was not taken there to be killed. It was unpleasant, tragic even, but it was not a premeditated murder. We both know that. The inquest decided it. Let it rest.’