of the wall, suppressing a yelp of pain as the hilt of his sheathed cutlass dug into his hip bone.
He was in the great court of the Steelyard Hall. Above him, a hundred feet or more high, was the stone-built tower where a constant watch was kept for returning trade ships as they made their slow tack up the Thames from all the distant shores of the world, bringing with them fortunes or disappointment.
“Here, you!” an artisan called out to him, anger in his voice.
Boltfoot rose painfully to his feet, unslung his caliver, and leveled it at the man in warning. The man took one look at it and hurried away, around the side of the hall. Boltfoot limped on across the court, past the great watchtower and toward the Windgoose Lane gateway. He heard a noise and turned to see that his pursuers were clambering over the wall from the hen coop, the man from outside the school first. Boltfoot loosed off a shot from his caliver. The man screamed and fell, clutching at his shattered shinbone.
Smoke rose lazily from the weapon. Boltfoot slung it over his back and slipped through the gateway, looking about him. At the northern end of the street, he saw her at the prearranged spot: Eleanor Dare, mounted on a bay gelding, holding the reins of a second horse at her side. Boltfoot called to her and she saw him and urged the horses into a trot toward him.
“Quick,” he said. “He is right behind me.”
With supreme effort, he launched himself at his mount and pulled himself into the saddle. They wheeled, kicked their heels into the animals’ sides, and broke into a canter northward. A volley of shots broke the silence behind them, but by then they were beyond the range of McGunn’s petronels and were gone, into the maze of alleyways that crowded this part of London city.
I N THE EARLY EVENING LULL, Shakespeare retired to the room that Starling had offered him. It was small but convenient, being in the main part of the house-at great expense to Mr. Watts, no doubt-where Shakespeare would not be far from Essex, and could monitor his movements closely.
On his way to the room, he had tried to see Sir Robert Cecil, but Clarkson had told him the meeting would have to wait; Sir Robert was in a session of Privy Council and would then attend upon the Queen.
In Shakespeare’s little chamber, which was cluttered with luggage boxes and rails of gowns, Starling had had a mattress and blankets put out for him on the floor beneath the window. He lay down, intending to steal an hour’s rest before the evening madness began, but fell into a deep sleep.
It was dark when he awoke. From below the window came the roar of laughter, the din of loud music, wild cheering and stamping of feet. Quickly he dressed in his ancient court attire and made his way down to the teeming central courtyard, which was alight with pitch torches and blazing cressets of oil against all the walls. More light, from hundreds of candles, spilled out through the tall windows of the great hall, where revelers drank heavily and danced the volta with abandon.
Weaving his way through the crowd and into the hall, he felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see the smiling face of Frances, the Countess of Essex. “Mr. Shakespeare, I thought that was you. I saw you at the baiting this afternoon.”
He bowed. “My lady.”
“Oh, don’t be so formal, Mr. Shakespeare. And before you ask, I am feeling quite myself again, thank you. The Queen’s own physicians have been treating me for my little illness. They are so attentive to me. I believe Sir Robert Cecil has even forbidden me to depart from court, so careful is he of my health.”
“I am delighted to hear it.” More delighted, Shakespeare thought, than she would ever know. “And have the tiny flying things gone?”
She frowned. “What flying things, Mr. Shakespeare?”
He laughed. “Pay me no heed, my lady. I have supped too much claret.”
As he spoke, his gaze drifted off across the hall to where her husband, Essex, was talking to McGunn’s man Slyguff. As he watched, Slyguff took a paper from his doublet and showed it to Essex. The Earl broke the seal and read it, then looked up. Slyguff indicated Shakespeare with an incline of his thin face. Essex followed his gaze.
Shakespeare felt a chill in his bones.
“Ah, look, there is my husband,” the Countess said, as if spotting an old friend she had not seen in months. Her voice turned more melancholy. “You know, Mr. Shakespeare, although Sir Robert keeps me at court, still my lord of Essex seems very distant. He has not spoken more than ten words to me these past days.”
Shakespeare did not know what to say; he could think of no crumb of comfort to offer this woman, who had wed two of the greatest heroes of England-first the tragic warrior-poet Sir Philip Sidney and now Essex-but had never won either of their hearts. The world knew that Sidney’s great love had been Penelope Rich-the Stella of his poem
“He is with Mr. Slyguff,” she continued. “Do you not think that Irishman a most curious, cold fellow, Mr. Shakespeare? He never seems to speak a word. Perchance he is dumb.”
The Countess drifted off into the throng, then a drum roll, like distant thunder, silenced the talk and laughter in the hall. The Master of the Revels took to the stage and clapped hands for attention. Shakespeare saw that the Queen had taken the prime seat up in the gallery. She was surrounded by her favorites-Heneage, old Burghley, Drake, Howard of Effingham. Essex walked away from Slyguff and ascended the gallery steps to join the royal party, kissing the Queen’s hand with an excessive show of ardor. He took the seat on her right. Sir Robert Cecil was on the other side, at the far end of the row, small and unassuming in his dark and sober attire. The contrast between him and the flamboyant, domineering Essex could not have been more marked.
On stage, an entertainment with mock ships-of-war reconstructed the sinking of the Armada and made jest of King Philip of Spain. At one point, Sir Francis Drake himself jumped onto the platform and grabbed a wooden sword from one of the players and made much ado about running the King through, to great applause.
John Dowland, the lutenist, played a ballad about a shepherd and his sheep. Players dressed in shepherds’ smocks entered the stage, driving a flock of six Cotswold sheep before them. The Master of the Revels then introduced Lord Chandos, the owner of Sudeley Castle, who bowed and offered the sheep as a gift to Her Majesty, describing them as the finest wool-bearers in the county.
The Queen accepted the gift with good grace and said she would take care to protect her new pets from she- wolves, at which the audience roared with laughter. As if on cue, a player dressed as a huntsman came on stage, with a wolf straining at a leash. The wolf had been put into fine lady’s clothes, with gold and silver threads, emeralds and sapphires. It also bore a fine ruff around its collar and a lawn coif about its narrow gray head, with its ears pointing up through two slits. It panted and drooled heavily, revealing its long teeth.
The crowd gasped. Shakespeare looked toward Essex. How would he react to this undisguised mockery of his mother? Everyone in the room knew it to be a calculated insult.
His face was as dark as a storm-laden sky. He seemed to hesitate a moment, then made his decision. Without taking his leave or even bowing to his sovereign, he rose to his feet and stalked from the royal gallery. The Queen feigned indifference and continued talking with Lord Burghley on her left, but none present could have failed to note the disrespect, even contempt, that Essex had shown her by turning his back and walking away from her so. If anyone else had done such a thing, they would have been dispatched to the Tower without delay. Only Essex, with his tempestuous, hot-and-cold relationship with the monarch, could get away with such insolence.
“Well, well, well.”
Shakespeare swung around and found himself face-to-face with Richard Topcliffe.
“That should sort the sheep from the wolves.”
“Have you run short of women, children, and priests to persecute, Topcliffe?”
Topcliffe was in court clothes: a black doublet with slashed arms, showing a gold inlay, yellow-gold breeches, and black netherstocks. He exuded an unholy stink.
He sneered at Shakespeare. “And whose side are you on? Whom do you favor in the battle that lies ahead?”
“What battle, Topcliffe?”
“You are more the mooncalf than ever I had imagined.”
Topcliffe eyed him a moment with overt loathing, then pushed him in the chest, forcefully, with the palm of his right hand. Shakespeare reeled but kept his feet.
“I look forward to the day that I drain your blood, you son of a Papist. And I will see your dog-daughter drab of a wife and her runt in the grave before the year is out. You can all join your good friend Father Southwell at
