“Look, I don’t mind a bit of messing about, a few light strokes before a good fuck, but I’m not doing it any harder than I’ve already given you.”
“How much do you want?”
“I don’t need your money, sir. I run a respectable business here and I don’t want no dead bodies on my hands.”
“Then get another girl, who will do it.”
Parsimony shrugged her shoulders. This was a difficult one. She needed to have a word with Starling. “All right. Wait here, sweeting.”
She left him on the bed and traipsed downstairs. Starling would know what to do. In some ways she was the cleverer of the two.
Parsimony touched her arm at the card table. “A word if I might, Little Bird.”
“Of course, Queenie.”
They went off to a private room. “Got a cove upstairs wants me to beat him raw like a Bridewell penitent. Thing is, he’s got good money. Shame to turn him away.”
“Then give him what he wants.”
“Don’t like to, Starling. It’s not me.”
“Well, I’d happily give any man a thrashing. All I’d have to do is close my eyes and think of my husband.”
“Would you do this one for me? I’ll owe you.”
“Of course, ducks. You take over the dealing. And give the bishop’s son a break. It’s not good for business to skin customers into the gutter.”
Chapter 34
Every muscle was taut like a drawn-back longbow string. How close had he come to Herrick? The assassin had been there. He had definitely been there at the house by Horsley Down-and recently. Now he was gone, lost in the sea of people of all shades that inhabited this infernal town.
Shakespeare sipped his wine by the fire. On the morrow, he would ride to Windsor and find this Ptolomeus. But he lacked enthusiasm for the task. What purpose could such an outing serve? How could an old, decrepit priest help him find the murderer of Lady Blanche Howard or prevent the murder of Sir Francis Drake?
The good news was that Drake would soon be traveling to Plymouth by sea. Reason told Shakespeare that Drake would be out of harm’s way, yet there was a gnawing pit of worry in his stomach that suggested otherwise. There was something terribly wrong here. For the first time, Shakespeare had a sense of dread; he began to fear he was going to lose this battle.
And then it struck him. He knew, for certain, the identity of the man sent to kill Drake, though he did not know his present name, but this killer had not worked alone in Delft, so why would it follow that he was working alone now? Who was the other man in this conspiracy? A cold foreboding descended. He recalled the story of Balthasar Gerard, the man who fired the shots that killed William the Silent. Gerard had spent weeks, months even, inveigling himself into a position of trust inside Prince William’s household. Could Herrick’s accomplice be doing the same here in England? The sense of dread crept like tentacles of ice through his soul. “ A man called Death is on his way… ”
“You are lost in thought, John.”
He looked up. Catherine was watching him with concern in her eyes. Like him, she held a goblet of claret. She was sitting on the settle close to his wooden chair. The children were in bed asleep, as was Jane. Without thinking, he reached out and touched her dark hair.
She had stayed awake until he returned from the Horsley Down raid and had welcomed him in. There had been something natural about the way she opened the door to him, almost as if she were more to him than a house guest under his protection. A disturbing vision of Mother Davis and her whore Isabella Clermont came to mind; the elder woman’s head was half flesh, half bone, and she was urging on Isabella, naked astride him and riding him like a horse of the apocalypse. He thrust the vision aside. He would have naught to do with hexes and spells. Such things were not for Christians of any denomination.
Catherine did not shy away from his touch. Instead, her hand went to his hand and held it to her face, warmed by the fire. His fingers curled through hers and tangled in her hair. Without premeditation, their lips moved toward each other and they kissed. Shakespeare sank onto the settle beside her. His right hand caressed her hair and face, his left moved down the slender length of her body and she did not resist, though she had never been touched like this before.
Their kissing became urgent. Of a sudden he had her in his arms, pulling her down on the settle, devouring her. She pushed him away.
She said, “We can’t stay here. The children might wake. Jane might come down.”
“Will you come to my room?”
She smiled and kissed his lips quickly. “I will.”
As they stood he held her in his arms again and kissed her with ferocity, at once hard and gentle. They stood like that for a minute, fused together, scarce able to consider the possibility of not touching for a few seconds.
They broke apart and went silently to their rooms. Shakespeare lit candles and stood beside the dresser in his shirt and breeches, not knowing what to do next. Would she really come to him? Or was he to be left here like a dying man offered water only to have it snatched away?
The door opened and she stood before him, her skin golden in the candlelight, her hair as lustrous as fine black satin. He went to her and, with unpracticed fingers, tried to negotiate the ties and stays that held her clothes in place. She laughed lightly and helped him until her underskirts fell away and she stood before him naked and unashamed.
His hunger for her was almost unbearable. She moved toward him, to help him disrobe, and the closeness of her bare skin brought him to the hardness of oak. She whispered in his ear, “You seem quite lost for words, sir.”
He kissed her, long and deep, then ripped the clothes from his body and pulled her to the bed, entering her in a hurry born of longing. She cried out from the sharp pain of her torn maidenhead and he froze momentarily. “Don’t stop,” she murmured. “Please, John, don’t stop.”
The joints of the old wooden bed creaked with their movements. He had not used the bed for this purpose before. She kissed the palm of his hand. He kissed the bud of her breast. He moved between her legs as in his dreams. The light of candles flickered their shadows on the ceiling and walls of his plain room. The only sounds were of wood on wood and their breathing.
He arched away from her so that he could see her. Her eyes were closed, her long lashes sweeping like crescent moons beneath. His hands reached down to the inside of her thighs, that tender flesh that draws men in. He caressed and traced patterns across her soft, dark down and up to her belly, holding her pinioned with the whole palm of his hand, pushing himself in, withdrawing, pushing in.
She felt no guilt, just abandonment to her senses. If this made her a sinner, she would face up to it at another time. Not now. Now she was lost in the moment and she would reach that ecstasy of which she had heard from friends when she was a girl and which she had practiced on herself in the long nights alone.
He became more urgent. She pushed up immodestly to meet the quickening pulse of his movements. They were so lost in each other now, so frantic in their passion, that pleasure and pain dissolved into one entity. She would part her legs wider and wider still, until they engulfed him and took him into her the more. He would go deeper into her, deeper.
She cried out and he gasped and shuddered and collapsed upon her breasts.
They lay like this, not wishing to move, saying nothing, nowhere near sleep until, soon, their desire awoke again simultaneously and they began once more. This time it was slower, more gentle, and they instinctively found new positions on the small bed. In the candlelight he spotted blood on the white sheets and he wondered vaguely what Jane would make of it when she took the sheets for laundering. She would know, of course. How could she not? But he did not care. Not now, anyway.
