The footman bowed and retreated into the darkness of the hall without a word.
‘Collect the sword on your way out, Mr Shakespeare,’ Wilton said.
Shakespeare did not wait to be invited in, but stepped into the hallway and shut the door behind him. He looked about at his surroundings. The place appeared as fatigued as the footman. Above the wainscot, the plasterwork was rent and falling away in places and much of it seemed disfigured by damp and dark yellow and brown blots. There were no portraits, nor any hangings. There was a strong smell of rot. Shakespeare guessed that the house had been unoccupied for years and opened up only recently to accommodate Antonio Perez and his entourage.
‘How may we help you, Mr Shakespeare?’
Shakespeare turned around at the sound of the heavily accented voice; a Spanish accent — something to chill the heart of any Englishmen in these long days of warfare between the two countries. He was face to face with a tall young man, perhaps half an inch above his own six feet. The man was well dressed, in a doublet of silver and black brocaded velvet and slashed silver sleeves. His hair was long, black and combed back. His skin was copper- dark with a sheen of robust health.
‘Don Antonio?’ Even as he said the words, Shakespeare realised it was a foolish question. This man was half Perez’s age.
The man smiled with something akin to condescension. ‘I am his personal secretary, Mr Shakespeare.’
‘I am sent by Sir Robert Cecil. I am told Don Antonio would talk with me.’
‘We were expecting you. But it is very early in the morning. Don Antonio has been unwell and tends to sleep in until midday. Perhaps you will come back later — or would you care to wait?’
‘I will wait. But I would be grateful if he could be woken a little earlier. I have pressing business.’
‘I understand, sir. Let me show you to the parlour and I will alert Don Antonio to your presence as soon as I dare. Would you care for something to eat or drink?’
Shakespeare declined and followed the Spaniard through to a slightly more comfortable room with a settle, a card table and a few books. A tall cedar of Lebanon dominated the gardens outside the window and took most of the light from the room.
The secretary bowed without a great deal of deference and said he would have the servants light a fire, then disappeared. A plain young rustic girl came in, nodded quickly and fearfully to him, then attended to the fireplace. It occurred to Shakespeare that a fire was the last thing he needed on so fine a day, but he suspected the house needed as much warmth as it could get and, anyway, watching her passed the time. Soon the sound of crackling logs and the joyful light of a blazing fire brought some cheer to the room.
Shakespeare sat back and skimmed through the books. They were all Spanish poetry, which did little for him except test his command of the language, which was not, he realised, what it had once been. There were few Spaniards to talk to in London these days, and had not been, in fact, in the nine years since Ambassador Mendoza was expelled from England. The only Spanish that Shakespeare read now was in decoded intercepts of letters criss-crossing between the courts of Europe.
He was just grappling with Herrera’s Rimas Juventiles — youthful rhymes — when a woman swept into the room unannounced. Shakespeare turned at the creak of the door and the rustle of her gown. She was dressed for riding in a long velvet cape, a simple dress of fine brown worsted with a safeguard to protect it, a white linen partlet about her breast and a cap adorned with a feather. Most striking of all, she wore a black patch over her left eye. The only time Shakespeare had ever seen a woman affect such a decoration was in a portrait of the notorious Princess of Eboli, said to have been lover and co-conspirator to Perez. Who was this woman who looked so like his former love?
She carried a hunting-crop in her small white-gloved hand. She stopped and gazed with her one seeing eye at Shakespeare, looking him up and down as a horse trader might appraise a prize stallion. Even in her respectable riding attire, a man could not help but notice the voluptuousness of her body, which shimmered even as she stood still.
‘I had heard that we had a visitor,’ she said in slightly stilted English. Her voice was husky and warm, with the mellow, sing-song timbre of her native Spanish. ‘I must say, you do not look like one of King Philip’s assassins. But who can tell? Everyone I meet these days seems to be a spy or a mercenary.’
‘I am no assassin, senora.’
‘My name is Ana Cabral,’ she replied, holding out her delicate hand to Shakespeare. ‘Dona Ana. And if you were an assassin, sir, I assure you that you would not get very far. My lord of Essex has the place swarming with his men-at-arms.’
Shakespeare took the gloved hand and bent to kiss it. It remained in his hand a few beats too long.
‘I am with Don Antonio’s party, his travelling companion…’
He did not need to ask in what capacity she accompanied Perez. Something about her manner told him she was his cortisane. He guessed her age at twenty-four or twenty-five. She was fair-haired with a streak of silver through one side of her well-coiffed locks. Her English, though accented, was clear-spoken and accurate. She had about her the sensuous demeanour of courtesans everywhere. Perhaps she was born with it. No man could look at her and fail to wonder how she would move beneath the sheets. She was not beautiful, nor even pretty, but she did not need to be, for she dazzled like a rare jewelstone. She would know, Shakespeare thought, all the sexual wiles necessary to keep a man beguiled in bed for as long as she desired, or as long as he had gold enough. She was worldly.
‘And you, sir, who are you?’
‘John Shakespeare. I have orders to talk with Antonio Perez.’
‘I imagine you are here to grant him access to the Queen. He has waited nearly two months now and is becoming impatient. And so am I, for I wish to dance at court. Well, come with me. I will take you to his chamber before I go for my ride. You do not have a Spanish wheel-lock secreted up your sleeve, I presume?’
Shakespeare smiled. ‘No wheel-lock. But I had heard Don Antonio was asleep.’
‘That is just his secretary. Pay him no heed. He plays his little games. Very proud and insolent for a mere servant, do you not think?’
Indeed, Shakespeare did think so, but he said nothing. He followed the woman through to the hall and up the stairway to the first floor.
‘Look at this place, Mr Shakespeare,’ she said brushing a cobweb from the corner of a cracked window in the gallery. ‘Henri of Navarre would not treat an honoured guest to his country so.’ She threw open the door to a chamber and pushed on in. A four-poster bed hung with rich drapes stood in the centre of the dimly lit room. The floor was littered with clothing — farm clothes of wool and linsey-kersey, smocks and breeches and a hide jerkin that looked and smelled a hundred years old. Ana Cabral drew the bed curtains apart.
Shakespeare saw what appeared to be a mass of bodies on the bed. He counted limbs and reckoned there to be four people. Two men and two women. All were asleep, softly snoring, though they stirred at the noise and sudden admission of light to their little world. He was assailed by the stench of sweat, stale alcohol, farting and copulation.
‘Don Antonio, you have a visitor,’ Ana said in Spanish, idly stroking one of the limbs with her gloved hand. ‘Mr Shakespeare from the office of Sir Robert Cecil.’
The elder of the two men grunted from the depths of the bedding. Ana leant over and kissed him on the mouth. Shakespeare saw that he had a beet-swarthy face of broken veins, a stubble of beard and a straggle of dyed black hair. He opened his eyes, blinking. Was this the face that had won the love of the tragic Princess of Eboli? Shakespeare shuddered. Carelessly elbowing one of the women in the face, Perez raised himself up against the bed cushions.
‘Shakespeare?’
‘At your service, Don Antonio.’
‘Ana, pay these peasants and send them away. Give more to the little fair one and tell her to return this night. And bring her sister — or brother — if she has one.’
Without a word, Ana began to lay about Perez’s young bedmates with her crop, lashing them hard across legs, buttocks and heads until they leapt up and ran naked from the room, dragging their garments behind them. She laughed at their going, then stretched over the bed once more and kissed Perez. ‘I shall go and give them their dues now. I will have wine and meats brought to you and Mr Shakespeare.’
After she had gone, Perez patted the bed at his side with a gloved hand. ‘Come, sit with me, Mr Shakespeare.
