throat as will sink all your galleons.”
Drake nodded to Shakespeare, his face grim. “Leave now, Mr. Shakespeare.”
Elizabeth was breathing fast. Her body was rigid, as if the slightest movement would draw the needle-sharp point of the blade into her throat.
Shakespeare stood his ground. “I am going nowhere. My order is to protect you.”
In one lightning-swift motion, Herrick flung Elizabeth across the room. In the same movement, he lunged at Drake, poniard raised, with all the force of a bull in the ring. As he thrust forward and down with the blade, he hissed, “So die all heretics…”
Drake did not retreat an inch. Herrick’s blow descended hard, slicing through flesh and glancing off bone, but it was Shakespeare’s left forearm that took the blow, not Drake’s body. Shakespeare’s right arm came down behind Herrick’s neck, the hilt of his sword cracking into the base of his skull and pummeling him to the ground at Drake’s feet. Shakespeare stamped his left foot down onto the nape of Herrick’s neck. He raised up his sword, now greasy with his own blood, in his uninjured right arm and held it suspended as if about to drive it down through the would- be killer’s back.
“No, Mr. Shakespeare,” Drake said. “Save that pleasure for the headsman.”
As Shakespeare stood over the assassin’s prostrate body, Drake went to his wife and helped her from the floor. He took her in his arms with a tenderness Shakespeare would never have thought possible of such a man among men.
“Are you much hurt, Lady Drake?” her husband asked.
“I am sure I shall survive, Sir Francis.” She dusted herself down, then turned to Shakespeare, whose arm was pouring blood. “But I fear Mr. Shakespeare will not-unless he quickly has some assistance.”
Boltfoot arrived with candles to light the room. Servants were drifting back from the fire and one was sent to fetch the constable. Lady Drake staunched the flow of blood from Shakespeare’s arm with a ripped-up shirt of her husband’s, then told a maid to summon a physician to look at the wound properly.
Herrick was beginning to come around, but Boltfoot had already bound him and was sitting on a stool, pointing the octagonal muzzle of his caliver at the assassin’s face. It was not long before the constable and two powerful assistants arrived, all smelling of the fire they had been helping to douse at the Guildhall. Without ceremony, they carried Herrick out and tossed him onto a handcart. As he was hauled off to the town gaol, his face was a mask of bitter frustration.
“Well, Mr. Shakespeare,” Drake said. “Do you have any more Spanish killers up your sleeve to frighten me with?”
“I trust not, Vice Admiral.”
“Good. Then all we have to worry about is the ever-changing tide of our sovereign majesty’s capricious mind. Let us sleep now and sail in the morning. With God’s help, I vow that we will give the Spaniard such a beating he will wish he had never heard the name of Sir Francis Drake!”
The ships of Drake’s fleet sailed with the morning’s tide. He was aboard the Elizabeth Bonaventure, accompanied by three more royal galleons- Golden Lion, Dreadnought, Rainbow -and twenty other vessels. They were manned by three thousand sailors and soldiers, heavily armed and angry, and many tons of cannon and ball. Before weighing anchor, Drake found it in him to say a grudging word of thanks to Shakespeare for his “diligence,” then scribbled a final message for Walsingham and handed it to Shakespeare to carry to him:
The wind commands us away. Our ship is under sail. God grant we may live in His fear as the enemy may have cause to say that God does fight for Her Majesty as well abroad as at home.
There was a new urgency about the mission. The latest intelligence gathered by Walsingham had revealed that the Spanish admiral, Santa Cruz, planned to have his armada ready to sail this spring or early summer. Drake’s task was to destroy the enemy in her ports or at sea and to intercept and capture the Spanish treasure fleet from the Indies. Failure would mean nothing less than the destruction of England.
Shakespeare stood on the shore with Elizabeth Drake, Boltfoot, and thousands of townsfolk, all cheering and throwing their caps in the air as the brave pennants of the fleet stretched out in the stiff breeze. Elizabeth touched his face. “I am sure my husband has not thanked you adequately, Mr. Shakespeare, but please accept my sincere gratitude. Last night you saved both our lives.”
He had thought about it all at length. Despite exhaustion, he had hardly been able to sleep, so fast did his heart beat. The thing that kept coming back to him was that he could have killed Herrick, there and then, helpless on the floor, with one foot on the back of his neck. Like every child, Shakespeare had killed injured birds and hunted squirrels with bows and arrows for their red fur, yet he had never had cause to kill a man and often wondered whether he would have the stomach for it. Well, now he knew.
His left arm was heavily bandaged and supported across his chest in a sling. It was painful, but the cut had been clean and there was no reason to believe it would not heal. A physician dressed it with herbal tinctures to prevent gangrene and told him to drink brandy to counter the loss of blood. The ride back to London would be uncomfortable, but manageable.
Early that morning, Herrick had been arraigned before magistrates and then left to ponder his fate in Plymouth jail until trial, which would be a matter of two or three days; execution would follow swiftly. Shakespeare felt that this was a matter best dealt with locally; Mr. Secretary would not wish to have another Papist martyr paraded through the streets so soon after the execution of Mary Stuart. Anyway, Plymouth butchers could bowel and quarter Herrick as efficiently as the London headsmen.
Shakespeare spent a few hours with the would-be assassin, trying to persuade him to talk. He got little- neither confessions nor denials. Only when Shakespeare mentioned the murder of Lady Blanche Howard did the Jesuit break his silence briefly. Herrick laughed, humorlessly. “You do not think that was me, Mr. Shake speare? Look to your own… look to your own.”
Shakespeare pressed him but all the priest would say was, “My fate is certain, why should I waste what little breath I have left in talking with you?” Then he turned his back on his interrogator and dragged his heavy shackles and manacles into a marginally more comfortable position. For a brief moment, Shakespeare wondered whether to bring torture to bear; Mr. Secretary would undoubtedly approve. The thought did not last long. Torture repulsed him, as it did most Englishmen.
After Drake’s fleet sailed, Shakespeare and Boltfoot took horse for London. On the way, they stopped at the White Dog inn to repay the landlady who had helped Shakespeare when his purse was stolen. He had been handed ten pounds by Drake. “It is a loan, Mr. Shakespeare, to get you home. Not a gift.” Boltfoot had chuckled.
The days were growing longer. In a matter of just forty-eight hours the mist had given way to spring sunshine and crisp, clear nights. All the way, Shakespeare thought of Catherine; every mile they rode brought him closer to her. He clung to their one night together and prayed to God that it meant as much to her as it did to him. He would propose to her, of course. Yet he had, too, some nagging fear. Walsingham would not be best pleased that one of his senior officials intended to marry a Roman Catholic; perhaps he would go so far as to dismiss Shakespeare from his employment. Well, if that was to happen, so be it. His love for Catherine Marvell was paramount.
The riders made good progress and Shakespeare decided to take a short diversion to the Thames near Windsor, where he asked the way to the village of Rymesford.
He found the monk that Thomas Woode had told him about huddled in the remains of one of the drying rooms in the old mill. It was a ramshackle, dilapidated place of ancient rotted timbers, and it looked as though it might soon collapse into the river and be carried downstream. Hundreds of birds had made their nests in its beams and rafters and their noise was a cacophony. The old monk was scarce in better condition than the building. His skin was like yellowed parchment, his eyes hollow sockets without light. His old robe, which looked as though he might have been wearing it at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries fifty years since, was little more than rags, hanging from his gaunt shoulders and tied at the waist with frayed strands of rope.
“Are you Ptolomeus?”
The blind monk shied away at his voice like a beaten dog.
A sheet of paper caught in the breeze that blew through the gaping holes where once windows had been and fluttered past the old man. Shakespeare caught the paper. It was blank but it looked of identical quality to the papers found scattered around Lady Blanche Howard’s mutilated body in Hog Lane, Shoreditch.
“Ptolomeus, I have no wish to harm you. I am come to talk with you.”
The old man’s beard was long and pepper gray, as was his hair. He was encrusted with dirt and grime. He
