Rory Clements - Holy Spy

‘Help? What help? Can’t sew back glazers and bollocks, mister.’

‘They might have been saved nonetheless.’

‘Saved? Why would they want to be saved without eyes or balls? Can’t see, can’t swive. What’s left?’

Peace turned away from the boys. ‘Are you certain of their identities, John?’

‘Yes. This one’s Huckerbee. The other is Arthur Giltspur.’ He gazed on their disfigured torsos and faces. So alike; conspirators in death, as in life.

‘I fear I have disturbed your day bringing you here, but I needed someone with legal authority. The coroner, sheriff, justice – all are gone to St Giles in the Fields.’

Shakespeare managed a smile. ‘It is nothing. To tell you the truth, Joshua, I would rather be here looking upon this obscenity than at St Giles. If I am the one man in London not there, then I am glad of my absence.’ Seven men were to die this day: Savage, Babington, Ballard, Barnwell, Dunn, Salisbury, Tichbourne.

Seven more would follow tomorrow: Abingdon, Tilney, Bellamy, Charnock, Jones, Gage, Travers. Some had been prime movers, some had played little part in the plot. The penalty was the same for all.

Walsingham had confided in Shakespeare that the Queen had ordered that some extra torment should be added to the punishment ‘for more terror’ so as to deter other would-be assassins and plotters.

For more terror. As if the prospect of hanging, drawing and quartering were not terror enough for any man. Yet Shakespeare knew exactly what those three cruel words meant. They meant that the men would be cut down almost immediately from the noose so that they were still alive and fully conscious for the godly butchery. The execution would be deliberately prolonged.

First the prick and balls would be sliced off, then held before the victim’s eyes and tossed into the cauldron. Next the belly would be opened and the bowels drawn forth. Again, these would be shown to the condemned man before being dispatched to the pot. Finally the ripping out of the heart and merciful death. And in the aftermath, the quartering and decapitation, the head held up to the cheering crowd, the proper end of a traitor.

For more terror.

Which was worse, the punishment meted out by a criminal to two men who had stolen from him or the punishment ordered by the state for those deemed traitors?

Shakespeare took one last look at the corpses of Huckerbee and Giltspur. ‘I will leave this matter to you, Joshua. I will send Boltfoot to assist you in removing the bodies. Deal with them as you wish. The sheriff may have other thoughts, but I doubt he will wish to take the matter further.’ He was turning away when one of the mudlarks thrust his hand in his face, holding his new bollock-dagger menacingly with the other hand. ‘Come on, mister, a penny – or we’ll pelt you with sludge.’

Shakespeare pulled a penny from his purse and spun it in the air so that it fell to the muddy ground near the boys’ feet. They fell to fighting over it. Then the smaller one stood up, bit the

coin, held it in the air to goad his friend, and began to run.

‘Come on, I’ll race you to Giles Fields!’

‘Hey, half that’s mine.’

‘Only if you get it off me. But I’ll buy you a beer. Come on

– I want a place by the scaffold!’

The streets from the Tower to St Giles in the Fields were thronged. If you couldn’t get a place near the scaffold, the next best thing was a position along the route watching the first seven Babington plotters being drawn to their death. They wanted to see the priest Ballard, said to be a Jesuit with a heart as black as his robe; they wanted to see the proud young gentleman Anthony Babington brought low by overweening ambition and arrogance; they wanted to see John Savage, the soldier who had sworn to kill the Queen.

Shakespeare threaded his way through the crowd back to Seething Lane and called for Boltfoot. Jane came scurrying from the kitchen.

‘Where is Boltfoot, Jane?’

‘He has gone out, master.’

Shakespeare frowned. ‘The executions?’ Surely Boltfoot did not wish to join the bloodthirsty throng at St Giles in the Fields.

She shook her head with vigour. ‘No, master. Not that.’

‘Where then?’

‘I believe . . . sir, must I say?’

‘Jane, you cannot keep secrets from me. I need Boltfoot – and I need him now.’

‘Oh, master, I believe he has gone east of London again.’

Shakespeare rolled his eyes to the heavens. ‘In God’s name, why?’

Jane hesitated, then said, ‘I am not certain.’

‘Jane?’

‘Then I must say it. He has gone to see Mistress Cane.’

Bathsheba Cane? The widow of the murderer? At first, Shakespeare was dumbfounded. ‘What? Why would he do that?’ Yet even as he asked the question he realised how foolish it must sound. There was only one reason Boltfoot would go there.

‘I believe he wished to thank her for returning his weapons.’

‘Indeed? His weapons . . .’ Shakespeare shook his head slowly. ‘And you believe that, do you, Jane?’

She flushed, as though caught out in something shameful. ‘It did occur to me there might be another reason for his visit, sir.’

‘Well done, Jane.’ He noticed the distress in her eyes. ‘Forgive me, Jane – I did not wish to make jest at your expense.’

She performed a little curtsy. ‘It is nothing, master.’

‘I had better find one of the stablehands to help me.’

‘They have gone to Giles Fields.’

‘And Mr Maywether?’

‘Gone this morning, not an hour since, up to the east coast, his purse bulging, as he insisted on telling me. He bade me wish you a farewell and thanks.’

Shakespeare cursed inwardly. He drank a cup of ale then went to the stableyard. A small handcart was standing on the flagstones close to the stalls. It would just about carry two bodies but, with his damaged ribs, he was not sure that he was strong enough to push it. Well, it seemed he had no option but to try. Without ado, he lifted up the long handles and began trundling south and west towards the bridge, close to where the bodies had been staked out. The wheels ran true and he found the going easy enough.

As he approached the crowds on Tower Street he realised that the procession was under way. His heart told him to turn away, walk home until the cavalcade of death had passed. But something within him kept him moving forward. Using the handcart to part the onlookers, he pushed himself to the front of the line, right at the edge of the dusty road. A grey mare was approaching, dragging an osier hurdle, which was bumping along the ground. Shakespeare saw instantly that the man on the hurdle was Anthony Babington.

His fine-cut hair, the pride of Mane’s of Bishopsgate, was tangled and thick with dirt as it trailed along the road. His eyes were wide open, staring up at the blue sky as though he would somehow take the image with him to the life eternal.

‘God go with you.’ The words came from Shakespeare’s mouth unbidden. Babington’s head, juddering from its proximity to the roadway, turned slightly and his upside-down eyes met Shakespeare’s. He must have known him, but recognition did not register. And then the procession moved on.

Shakespeare had seen perdition in the eyes. They were no longer the eyes of a human being, but of a wild animal caught in a trap from which there was no escape and only one end.

He would never forget those eyes.

Boltfoot tapped lightly at the door. From within he heard footsteps. He took a deep breath and tried to fix a smile to his face.

The door opened. Boltfoot started to say, ‘Mistre-’ but immediately stopped, for a man stood in front of him. Not just any man, but the water-bearer Tom Pearson.