Rory Clements: Martyr

Shakespeare couldn’t help laughing out loud.

“At least she was a ewe, not a ram, so I suppose that’s all right. Isn’t it?” Slide said. “I’m afraid I am not sure of the teaching on such matters in the new church.”

Shakespeare laughed again. He was grateful to Slide for lightening his mood. There had been much darkness lately-plots against Her Majesty, a pending death sentence hanging over Mary, Queen of Scots. “You will get yourself hanged if you do not take care, Harry Slide.”

“Perhaps. But for the present, could I interest you in the whereabouts of two priests of the Society of Jesus…”

Shakespeare suddenly paid attention. “Two Jesuits? Garnet and Southwell?”

“The same.”

“Well, yes, of course, that would be a big catch. Do you have them?”

“As good as in the net, Mr. Shakespeare.”

“Tell me more.”

Slide was a slender man with open features beneath fair locks. It was said he could charm eels out of rivers or bees from their hives. Even those he betrayed-and there were many-found it difficult to dislike him. “I want a hundred marks for my information.”

Shakespeare knew the man was dissembling, that he did not as yet know where the notorious Jesuits were hiding, but if anyone could find them it was Slide. He claimed to know what was going on everywhere in the capital and swore he had one or more informers in every prison in London and Southwark. Shakespeare didn’t doubt it. Slide had played a major part in exposing the recently foiled plot to murder Elizabeth and replace her on the throne with the Scots Queen. It was the Scots Queen who now seemed likely to have the shorter life, for she had shown herself to be up to her slender royal neck in the conspiracy against her cousin. Tried and condemned to death, Mary now awaited her fate in the bleak confines of Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire. All that was needed was a stroke of Elizabeth’s quill on the death warrant.

Mary’s plight was in no small part thanks to Harry Slide, for he had infiltrated the conspirators, and followed their every move on behalf of Walsingham and Shakespeare. The guilty men-Babington, Ballard, and the rest-never stood a chance. Their short lives had ended in torment and butchery at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, hanged by the neck but not allowed to die, their bodies sliced open, entrails drawn from them, beating hearts tossed carelessly into the cauldron, then their carcasses quartered and spread about the capital. Finally, their heads were thrust onto pikes and raised above London Bridge to warn other would-be traitors.

If Slide felt anything for these hapless, tragic men, whom he had come to know so well and whose friendship he had encouraged, he did not show it. He was an expert in the art of projection, feigning sympathy with a cause to draw its adherents to their doom. It might be impossible to trust Slide but, like a sharp kitchen knife that could slip and cut you, he was necessary. And, as far as Shakespeare was concerned, he was good company.

“You will have to tell me more before I can even think of parting with such a sum for a couple of Jesuits.”

“Well, I have sound knowledge that Southwell is living close by the city.”

“Where exactly?”

“I will know within forty-eight hours.”

“And Garnet?”

Slide grinned disarmingly and shrugged his well-padded shoulders. “Garnet is not here, I think. Gone traveling among his flock of traitors in Norfolk, I believe.”

“Well, that halves the price to start with.”

“Mr. Shakespeare, I have expenses…”

Shakespeare took his purse from his belt and removed two coins. “You mean you have tailors, vintners, and whores to keep happy. Gaming debts, too, I don’t doubt. Three marks now and twenty-seven more if you bring me to the Jesuit.”

Slide took the coins and jiggled them jauntily in his hand. You are a hard man, Mr. Shakespeare.

Luckily for you, I’m not as hard as I might be, Harry, or you’d spend half your life in the pillory. But keep alert as always. We need intelligence.

Your will be done, O master.

Slide departed with another sweep of his expensive cape.

The constable could not have been more of a contrast as he bent low beneath the oak lintel of the door. He was big, with longbow-man’s arms that bulged through the woolen smock beneath his oxhide jerkin, and yet he was shaking with something akin to terror. He smelled of fire.

Shakespeare called in Jane, to bring ale to calm his nerves, and then the man blurted out his story of a woman found murdered. Shakespeare listened intently. It was a grim tale and one that Walsingham would expect him to investigate without delay.

The three of them-Shakespeare, Boltfoot, and the constable-took horse and rode through the busy morning streets up through the Bishop’s Gate, beneath the piked heads of thieves and murderers.

Ten minutes later they arrived at Hog Lane, close to Shoreditch and just north of the theaters where the old Holywell Priory had stood before Great Henry pulled it down. Their horses stood in the cold winter air, steam rising from their flanks and hot breath shooting from their nostrils. In front of them was a burnt-out house. The depressing stench of soot and burnt straw hung around them. Blackened debris lay around the horses’ hooves on the hard, icy earth.

Shakespeare huddled into his black bear cloak, a very welcome gift from the New World presented to him by Walsingham at Christmas last. It was a generous gesture and typical of Walsingham in his dealings with those he loved or for whom he felt responsible. He had taken Shakespeare into his employment nine years earlier, when he was a young lawyer newly arrived in London from the Midlands. Shakespeare’s master at Gray’s Inn, Paul Ballater, was a friend of Walsingham and had recommended his pupil for the post, thinking the younger man more suited for practical work than endless dry books. I see you looking out the window when your mind should be on precedent law, John, Ballater had said. Take my advice and go with Walsingham. You will find no better patron in all of England. Shakespeare had seen the truth in this and had not hesitated in accepting the post. He had suffered few pangs of regret, though Walsingham-the world called him Mr. Secretary-was an unbending driver of men.

The constable brought him back to the present. I believe this fire was set deliberate, Mr. Shakespeare, he said. When it caught, at midnight, the house and thatching suddenly went up into flames. I am told it was as if a taper had been put to powder, sir. George Stocker, the bellman, was here very quickly.

Where is he now?

At home not far away, sir, abed. He sleeps by day.

Fetch him.

The burnt house stood in a row of a dozen or more frames that had clearly been thrown up quickly in three or four acres of uncultivated land. Shakespeare recognized it as part of the expansion outward from London into what was recently open country to the north of the wall, past Spital Fields toward Ellyngton Ponds. The encroachment was everywhere. The ruined house had not been well built. It looked hastily erected by the landowner, and Shakespeare guessed its purpose was to house incomers from the shire counties; there was good money to be made providing lodging for skilled men who had any sort of work. The city was growing fast with men moving from all parts of the country and from over the water, either seeking wealth or escaping persecution in France or the never-ending war in the Spanish Netherlands. London could no longer contain all those who would live there.

Under the eaves of the stabling near the house, four vagabonds, all of them men and sturdy beggars by the look of them, lay beneath woolen rags on the bitter ground, sleeping off a night of strong ale. They looked like the sort of people no one wanted, the sort who could not get a bed without thieving the where withal, and later, most likely, swinging on the fatal tree at Tyburn for their trouble.