“But we still know what it said. And that brings us back to you-for I now need to know your answer, John Shakespeare. Are you with us or are you against us? She is about to enter her sixtieth year. What few teeth she has are blackened stumps. Her face is held together by paint and her body is a trillibub that the slaughterman would not rate fit for pies. She cannot live long. Everyone knows that, the whole world. The chart but proves it. Would you have a strong English king or a stranger on the throne? Would you have a man who would fight the Spanish with every last drop of his blood, or be ruled by a Scotch toad and a craven cripple who would faint at a cut finger?”
“An English king?”
“My brother, Mr. Shakespeare.” She looked at him searchingly. One of her fine eyebrows lifted and the corners of her mouth turned up. “Are you really so shocked? Can you think of a finer monarch for this great realm?”
“Your brother is noble, but he is not of the blood royal.”
“Is he not? Do you not think Great Henry’s blood runs through our veins?” Penelope laughed and touched the front of his breeches again. “You seem quite deflated. Do not worry about my brother’s entitlement. All will become clear. Now decide: for us, or against us. There is no middle way.”
He went down on one knee and bowed his head low in obeisance. Then he raised his face, took her hand in his, and kissed it. “I am with you, my lady. I humbly accept the position you have so graciously offered me.”
She bent and took his face between her soft white hands again and kissed him, long and deep. He wanted very much to put his hands inside her long embroidered gown, to slip his fingers between her legs, to throw her on the great black-draped bed and take her with more urgency than he had ever known, but he could not do it. His mind was willing, so was his body-almost more than he could bear-yet his soul held him back, as sure as an iron fetter keeps a man chained to a wall.
Playfully she pushed him away. “You are a married man and I am a married woman, John Shakespeare. Do you wish to ruin me?”
He bowed his head.
“I jest. It is the forbidden spice that makes love so piquant. Devotion without lust is like wine without sugar. Come to me in Staffordshire. My mother and I go to Blithfield and Chartley on the morrow. You will find us there until autumn, idling the days away in the gardens. Come to me by night, John, and we will instruct each other in country matters. I will show you pleasures you have never dreamed of. For the present, you must follow my brother, who is gone to court. There is much to be done.”
Chapter 32
S IMON FORMAN KNEW FOR A CERTAINTY THAT HE had the plague. But he knew, too, that it was the so- called red pest, which he believed to be not quite as deadly as the black disease.
It had come on the previous day. He had lacked energy as he
“I come to you because my master is otherwise engaged, Dr. Forman, and you can scarce keep your prick hard for me, nor attend to my needs. I had expected better of you, sir.”
“Forgive me, I am not myself this morning, mistress.”
She saw how distressed he was and softened toward him. “No matter, Dr. Forman. I am sure it is a passing thing, for I know your instrument to be like a broom handle.”
“I fear I may have some little summer sweat, mistress.” But even as he said the words, he knew the truth. He had the pestilence. He knew, too, that the cause was twofold-firstly, the adverse position of Mars, and secondly, retribution for all his manifold sins, not least of which was lust. But he was not downhearted, for he had devised a cure, and who better to try it on than himself?
He bade her good-day and promised to make certain of her satisfaction the next time she came, then returned to his rumpled bed.
The first appearance of the pestilence was already there by afternoon: swellings in the pits of his arms and lower down, close to his member and stones. When these swellings increased, with great purple boils, then the red lumps, it would be time for him to act. He must take a clean, sharp kitchen knife, or a dagger honed and tempered in the flame, then cut into the pustules, releasing the evil humors. The resulting raw wounds would have to be washed with boiled water, then dressed with clean muslin, tied firmly into place and changed every day. It would help, too, he was sure, to indulge in a little blood-letting. It would be an uncomfortable few days for him, with none of the customary fleshly pleasures in which he delighted, but he did not fear he would die, for he was in robust health.
He heard a hammering at the door downstairs and his spirits rose. It would be Mistress Annis Noke. She would nurse him through this, bringing him broth and electuaries as and when he required.
S HAKESPEARE WAS in a hurry. This was to be his last task before collecting his court attire and riding west toward the castle of Sudeley in the county of Gloucestershire, where the Queen was also heading for the fourth anniversary celebration of England’s victory over the Spanish Armada.
His impatient hammering at Simon Forman’s door went unanswered. At last he turned the latch and pushed. It was unlocked.
He heard a distant voice.
“Mistress Noke. I am in bed with the sweat. Will you not bring me a little spiced wine?”
Shakespeare ascended the stairs of Stone House to the second floor. In the front chamber he found the astrologer-physician stretched out naked on his mess of a bed.
“Simon Forman?”
The man opened his eyes with a start at Shakespeare’s voice. He sat upright and pulled his bedding around him as though it would protect him from the stab of a blade.
“I am not here to hurt you, Dr. Forman. My name is Marvell. John Marvell. I am here about an astrological chart.”
Forman’s shock subsided. “Do you just walk into a gentleman’s bedchamber?”
Shakespeare looked about him nonchalantly. It was a comfortable room in a sizeable house; clearly Forman must be doing well from his potions and charts. “The door was open. No one answered. Do I find you unwell?”
“A slight summer sweat. Nothing of consequence.”
Shakespeare kept his distance. “Well, I am sure you will cure yourself.”
Forman bridled at Shakespeare’s tone. “You sound the skeptic, Mr. Marvell. Fear not. I
“I care nothing for your physic. It is your casting of horoscopes that concerns me.”
“Mr. Marvell, look at me. I am a sick man. I cannot go about casting charts for you at present. Come back in a fortnight, sir, and I shall see what I may do for you.”
“I am here as an agent of the Privy Council, in particular Sir Robert Cecil. It has come to the Council’s attention that you did recently cast a chart requested of you by a great lady.”
The look on Forman’s face could not have undergone a greater transformation if he had been hit dead center by a crossbow bolt. The blood drained. For a man who a moment ago was laughing at the reaper’s meager efforts to kill him off with his filthy pestilence, he suddenly seemed to realize he was staring into the gaping jaws of death itself.
“You appear to have lost your power of speech, Dr. Forman. I am here with orders to seize copies of this chart. If you refuse, you will be taken to Newgate and will be arraigned in the Court of Oyer and Terminer. Do you understand?”
“Mr. Marvell, forgive me, I know not what you say. I am a humble physician. I can help you with the ague, I can even divine a chart to help you find the woman you should marry and tell you the best date and time to conceive a child. But who is this great lady you speak of-and what is this chart?”
Shakespeare eyed his quarry and saw he had him. “You know very well what chart I speak of, Forman. I have seen it. It is a chart that will sever your head from your body and your entrails from their housing if you do not
