understands your reluctance and the bad blood, caused I am sure by Mr. Cooper’s avarice, but he begs this one indulgence.
Drake began pacing again. His right hand was gripped on the hilt of his sword, but the weapon stayed firmly in its scabbard. Boltfoot Cooper protect my life? I have sailed tempests and seen strange sea monsters and been at one with God on the empty ocean, but never have I heard such a thing. What say you, Stanley?
He has courage, sir.
Aye, I’ll give you that. Cooper has courage. He was always a fine man in a fight with the Spaniard. Never did he hold back when the powder was burning hot.
I vouch he is indeed a fine man, Sir Francis. I would swear before God that he is loyal, true, and strong.
Well then, be done with it and give me the knave. I’ll remind him what it is to be Drake’s man. But he is under my command, you understand, Mr. Shakespeare.
I understand, Admiral.
Drake’s eye suddenly twinkled. I think I will set him to making casks for the fleet. That is a far more useful occupation; it is well-barreled water, ale, and salt pork that keeps a man alive at sea.
Shakespeare had to intervene. Forgive me, Sir Francis, but I think not in this instance. Your own life is what will keep your men alive at sea on this occasion.
Drake gave Shakespeare a hard look, thought a moment, then changed the subject. And tell me, what has happened to John Doughty? Is he hanged yet?
I fear I do not know, Admiral. The last I heard he had been consigned to the Marshalsea, but that was four or five years ago. God willing, he has died of the plague… but I mean to find out.
Chapter 11
Starling Day could scarce contain her fear and excitement. What could she do with all these riches? Where could she hide them? And what of the body?
She sat on a trunk looking at Gilbert Cogg’s corpse. In the palms of her open, spread hands was a bar of gold which, though she had never seen its like before, she knew to be worth riches beyond her imagining. Upstairs, in a coffer, hidden behind a barely visible door in a low cupboard to the side of the hearth, there was yet more gold, much more gold, along with silver and stones set as jewelry. Much more than she could reckon.
She clenched her fingers into talons over the gold as she tried to concentrate. She had to get the treasure out of this house quickly. Unless she moved Cogg’s body, it would soon be found. But there was too much treasure, and too heavy. Her mind kept drifting. How would she use this wealth? Fine clothes, a great house, good wine and food. But how could she buy all this and ensure her sudden wealth went unnoticed? Her dearest wish would be to return to her home village, Strelley, and parade in finery in front of her cruel husband and his witch of a mother to show him what she had become, but that would never be possible.
Alice. She would have to bring her cousin Alice in as her confederate in this. She could not cope with this alone. And anyway, there was more than enough to share; they would both be left wealthy. She looked again at the body. It was the size of a two-month heifer, more than three times her weight. She would never be able to move it alone. Perhaps, together, she and Alice could shift it. In the meantime she would have to cover it with something. She knew that Cogg had many visitors and he could be discovered at any moment.
The body was uncomfortably close to the front door. There was a bolt on the inside, which she had slid into place. Two people had already knocked on the door since she had been there, both eventually leaving disappointed. How long before someone broke in? She feared, too, that if someone looked closely through the window, they would glimpse the corpse.
Starling went back upstairs and took the covers from the bed where she had endured Cogg’s grunting, slathering weight. There was a carpet bag there, into which she put the gold bar she already held and a second one. Then, after concealing the rest of the hoard as well as she could, she brought the bag and the bedcovers back downstairs. She used the bedcovers to cover Cogg. Then she shifted the table so that the huge mound of his body was less visible from the window near the door.
She waited, listening for footsteps with trepidation. Finally, she slid back the bolt and wrenched open the door. Her heart thumped in her slender chest. She looked right, left, then shut the door behind her and moved quickly down Cow Lane, clutching the heavy bag to her breast, hunched forward into the cold, cold wind.
It was a brisk ten-minute walk through the mud and slush to the Bel Savage by Fleet Prison, hemmed in between the ditch and the western wall of London. The tavern was one of London’s most famed, attracting a fine crowd of lawyers, merchants, market traders, whores, and those who merely wanted to get knockdown drunk. There was always good entertainment to be had: lively minstrels and players staging entertainments. The tenement next door to it was well maintained considering its purpose as a bawdy house for the selling of women’s bodies. Downstairs was an anteroom, where customers-many of whom spilled straight out of the Bel Savage with a bellyful of ale or brandy befuddling their better judgment and keeping them from their wives and homes-could come to consider their purchase. Upstairs there were a dozen rooms, each with a bed and a fire and each shared by two whores for sleeping but with a different purpose when customers were to be entertained.
Alice had just finished with one of her regulars, a balding, half-blind old retainer from the Earl of Leicester’s great mansion just along the Strand. He was so decrepit it had taken him an hour to get started and another hour to finish. Starling pushed past him into Alice’s second-floor room and slammed the door shut with her shoulder. She dropped the bag with the gold bars on the far side of the bed in case anyone entered unannounced, then clenched her fists and let out a silent scream of joy. Alice, something has happened which I must tell you. We must be quick.
Alice finished washing herself and began dressing. That bastardly gullion. He took two hours and paid me for one. He’s getting worse. She pulled her blouse about her breasts. She was more rounded than Starling, her skin was clearer and more luminous, and her hair was fairer. Cogg had made sure she was properly fed with meat from the market at Smith Field and had plenty of ale.
Alice, forget about him. You must listen to me.
What, cousin, have you won at the cockfights?
Better. Oh, Alice, riches beyond your imagining. She clasped her cousin in a hug. Look in the bag, but hurry. I’ll stay by the door.
Alice went beside the bed and opened the bag. As she looked at the gold bars she could not at first work out what she was seeing. Then she thrust in her hands and pulled one of them out.
Leave it in the bag, Alice. Someone might come in.
Starling, where did you get this?
It was Cogg’s but now he’s backed, good and proper.
Cogg? Dead?
Starling nodded furiously. Dead, Alice, murdered… She saw the horror in her cousin’s face. No, no, no, not by me. Hastily she gabbled out the sequence of events as they had unfolded at the house in Cow Lane. Alice listened, still unbuttoned but her clothing forgotten.
I need you, Starling said at last. We’ve got to hide Cogg and get the gold out of there to somewhere safe. I’ll give you half of everything.
Starling, this is dangerous. You’ll get us both strung up at Tyburn.
It’s our one chance, Alice. You’ve got to help me.
Walking from the river stairs by London Bridge back to Seething Lane, John Shakespeare felt uneasy. He kept turning, certain he was being followed, but he could make out no one suspicious among the rowdy throngs of merchants, clerks, and apprentices who crowded the streets, nor among those driving the slow, ox-drawn wagons, laden with produce from Kent.
He had left Boltfoot at Greenwich with Drake. Boltfoot had been discomfited and Shakespeare felt bad, realizing the other man was in for a hard time staying close to his former captain twenty-four hours a day.
As Shakespeare left the palace, there had been a great excitement along the royal jetty. He saw Robert Beale there, among a group of courtiers, just about to get into a state barge. Beale was Clerk to the Privy Council and brother-in-law to Walsingham. Shakespeare knew him well.
