Rory Clements - Revenger

The second book in the John Shakespeare series, 2010

I N THE HEAT OF THE EVENING, JUST AS DAYLIGHT began to drift into dusk, Joe Jaggard took Amy Le Neve’s hand in his and pulled her willingly away from her wedding feast.

Amy was slight, little more than five foot and less than a hundredweight. Her fair hair shone in the last of the light, and her skin was as clear and soft as a milkmaid’s. She was sixteen, yet her hand in Joe’s great right hand was like a child’s. He was eighteen years, six foot or more, lean and muscular and golden. In his left hand he clasped a wine flagon.

They ran on, breathless, until her bare foot struck a sharp flint and she faltered, crying out in shock and pain. Joe stopped and laid her down in the long grass. He kissed her foot and sucked the blood that trickled from the sole.

Tears flowed down her cheeks. Joe cupped her head in his hands, his fingers tangling in her tear-drenched hair, and kissed her face all over. He held her to him, engulfing her.

She pulled open his chemise of fine cambric; he pushed her wedding smock away from her calves, up over her flawless thighs, crumpling the thin summer worsted. It was lovemaking, but it was warfare, too: the last delirious stabbings in a battle they knew to be lost.

Joe took a draft from the flagon. “You know what, doll,” he said, and his voice became high-pitched, “I do believe you are an abomination. Get you behind me, daughter of Satan, for you are profane and impure and as frail as the rib of Adam. Verily, I say you are fallen into corruption.”

She jabbed him sharply in the ribs with her elbow. “I’ll abominate you,” she said, laughing with him. She sobered. “The funny thing is, though, he really talks like that.”

“Winterberry? Winter-turd is what I call him. He’s a dirty, breech-shitting lecher of a man, I do reckon. Puritans, they call them. He’s as pure as swine-slurry, steeped in venery and lewdness. He’s got a face like a dog that’s never been out of the kennel and a suit of clothes so black and stark they’d scare the Antichrist back into hell. He’s buying you, paying for you as he might bargain for a whore at a Southwark stew.”

They were silent a few moments. In the distance, they could just hear the occasional whisper of music caught on the warm breeze.

“We’ll go,” said Joe. “We’ll go to London. I’ve got gold.”

“I can’t leave my family. They’ll get the law on us. You’ll be locked away and whipped. Strung up at Tyburn. I don’t know what.”

He turned to her, angry now. “Would you rather go to his bed? Would you have him play with you?”

“You know I don’t want that! They forced me to marry him.”

He turned his gaze from her. “I’ll kill them all, Amy. I’ll do for them-your kin, the lot. I’ll scrape the figs from Winter-turd’s arse and push them down his throat.”

She kissed him. “It’s hopeless. I’ll have to go back there tonight. I’m a married woman now.”

His eyes were closed. Then he opened them and smiled at her. “No, doll,” he said. “There’s stuff we can do. I can do. I promise you I can make it so we can be together forever. Trust me. Now kiss me again.”

They kissed, long and lingering. It was the last thing they ever did. They had not heard the creeping footfalls in the grass.

The first blow killed Joe. He knew nothing of it. Amy had no more than two seconds to register the horror, before the second blow came.

J OHN SHAKESPEARE FOUND HIS WIFE, CATHERINE, in the oak-paneled school hall, teaching their four-year-old daughter, Mary, her alphabet from a hornbook. Catherine met his eye but she did not smile. She tossed back her long dark hair as if ridding herself of a fly. Shakespeare sensed her anger and did his best to ignore it. He knew what she wanted to discuss, so he deliberately avoided the subject and said, “Rumsey Blade is set on flogging Pimlock yet again.”

“Yes,” she said curtly. “I know. Six stripes. Blade has it in for the boy.”

“Pimlock takes it with fortitude.”

“Well, I don’t, John. How can boys study when they face such punishments?”

There was nothing more to be said on the subject. It was merely another worry for Shakespeare to deal with as High Master of the Margaret Woode School for the Poor Boys of London. Like it or not, they were stuck with Rumsey Blade and his beloved birchrods; he had been inflicted on them by the fiercely Protestant Bishop Aylmer to ensure no Roman Catholic teachings burrowed their way into the curriculum. Catherine’s Papist leanings were well known and disliked.

“But there was the other matter…” Catherine continued.

Shakespeare’s neck muscles tensed. “Must we talk about such things in front of the child?”

Catherine patted her daughter. “Kiss your father and go to Jane,” she said briskly. Mary, delicate and comely like her mother, ran to Shakespeare and stood to receive and give a kiss, then ran off to find the maid, Jane Cooper, in the nursery.

“Now you have no excuse to avoid the subject.”

“We have nothing to discuss,” Shakespeare said, painfully aware of how brittle he must sound. “My position is plain. You must not go to the mass.”

Catherine stood up and faced her husband. Her blue eyes were cold and unloving. “I have surrendered to you on every aspect of our lives together,” she said quietly. “Our daughter is brought up conforming to the Anglican church, we run a conformist school, and I entertain no priests under our roof. I even attend the parish church so that I incur no fines for recusancy. Do you not think I have played my part, John?”

“I know it, Catherine, but…”

“Then why forbid me this one boon?”

John Shakespeare did not like to cross his wife. Usually it was pointless to do so, anyway, for she had a stubborn way. Yet this request was one he would fight to the bitter conclusion. He could not have her putting herself and the family in jeopardy.

“You know why, Catherine,” he said, his face set.

“No, John, I do not know why. I need you to explain it to me again, for I am but a mere woman and of simple wit.”

It would be a secret Roman Catholic mass. Such events were fraught with danger; simply to know the whereabouts of a priest, let alone harbor one, could lead to torture and the scaffold. And this mass was yet more perilous, for it was to be said by the fugitive Jesuit Father Robert Southwell, a man Catherine Shakespeare knew as a friend. He had evaded capture for six years and was regarded by Queen Elizabeth and her Privy Council as an irritant thorn to be plucked from their flesh at all costs.

“Catherine,” he said, trying to soften his voice-the last thing he wanted was this rift between them to escalate into an unbridgeable gulf-“I know you have made many compromises. But have I not done likewise? Did I not forsake my career with Walsingham to marry you?”

“So I must obey you?” Catherine said, almost spitting the words.

“I would rather you made your own-considered-decision. But, yes, I say you must obey me in this.” He had never spoken to her like this before.