an arqeubus. It was a rusted weapon that looked so old it might have seen service among the pikes and longbows at Flodden Field.
‘He is a journeyman cooper, Mr Warboys. You offered me a groat for every man of skill who would support us.’ King picked his pock-marked nose and wiped his finger over his grubby jerkin.
‘And if he is one such, you shall have your groat,’ Warboys said evenly. Suddenly he struck out at King and caught him on the cheek with the blade of his chisel. ‘But for all I know, he may be a spy sent by the Cecils, and now you have told him my name…’
King clutched at his bleeding face and winced. ‘I am sorry, master. I did not think even the Cecils had come so low as to employ cripples-’
‘But he’s good enough for me, is that it? Begone, before I chisel your head from your mangy body.’ He put down his tool and stepped forward, pushing King towards the doorway. ‘Go, Sir Dog, back to your kennel. If this is a friend, you shall have a groat. If not, I shall have your nose and tail.’ He kicked his breeches and sent him sprawling out into the street, leaving a splattering of his blood on the ground. The thin man, Warboys, turned to Boltfoot. ‘You are well armed, cooper. Are you an assassin or do you chase moles and rats for a living?’
Boltfoot got a clearer look at Warboys. His brow was partly covered by a fringe of black hair, raggedly cut like a poorly finished curtain. His eyes were too wide and too high. His nose was long and dominated the thin face unnaturally. His mouth had a permanent scowl. From a lifetime of being despised because of his club foot, Boltfoot was reluctant to turn against a man for being repulsive to look on, yet he felt there was some malevolence in Warboys’s ugliness. His instinct was to turn away and leave, but instead he smiled and spoke equably. ‘Neither. I am a ship’s cooper and fighting man, now laid up in a land I do not recognise as England. I fought to save my country from invasion by Spain and now see it invaded by others who are no better.’
‘So you wish to do something about it? Well, you have come to the right place, cooper. If you are what you seem…’
‘I had heard of a man named Curl. He sounded like such a one as a man might follow.’
Warboys gave Boltfoot a yet harder look. ‘Now where, precisely, would you have heard that name, might I ask?’
‘In the dockyards.’
‘From whom?’
‘Men in the taverns. They spoke it quietly to my ear, for they knew my feelings. They said I might find Mr Curl at St Botolph, preaching. Are you Holy Trinity Curl?’
The man laughed. ‘No, not me. You may call me Warboys, as that blockhead has already given my name — Mr Warboys. But you shall meet HT. I will take you to him. Before then, master cooper, I would ask you to show me your skills. Help me get this old hagbut sound. The stock is rotted and decayed. If you’re a cooper, I am sure you could fashion me a new one. We might need it soon. Very soon. When we are done I shall drink a tankard or two of ale with you. And then I shall set you to work making barrels, for we have a great need of barrels — a great need.’
Chapter 19
On the ride back to London, Shakespeare stopped his grey mare at a crossroads and seriously wondered about taking another turning. Just ride away from all this. Find a small town somewhere with a grammar school where he could teach; send for Mary, Grace and Andrew. Live quietly and anonymously in a place where none would know them or wish them harm. No Topcliffe, no powdermen, no Cecil.
He supped from his flask and looked at the different directions. All roads ran through fields bordered by hedging. Who was to say one route was better than another? Another traveller, a man of fifty or so with grey hair, a neat beard and no hat, approached and reined in at his side.
‘Are you lost, sir?’ the man said.
Shakespeare looked at him. Something in his manner of speaking and his firm yet kindly face told him that he was clergy of some ilk, though he was dressed in the unremarkable dark woollen doublet of a clerk or scribe. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he replied.
‘Then the peace of God be with you. He will show you the way.’
‘Will he?’
‘I am sure of it. I would ride with you a while and talk, but I can see that you wish to be alone.’
‘Thank you, Father.’ Shakespeare said the words without thinking. Some instinct had told him this was a priest, a Popish priest. Yet if he was such a one, Shakespeare should arrest him, for in law Popish priests who had come to England from the seminaries of France and Rome were guilty of treason.
The man smiled at him strangely, then kicked on. Shakespeare let him go, unhindered, and watched him as he rode into the distance, becoming a speck and vanishing into the afternoon haze. At last he kicked on, too, in the same direction. He would not turn away from this path; there was unfinished business in London town.
Sir Robert Cecil had a visitor when Shakespeare arrived. Ana Cabral, complete with eye patch — this time over her right eye, not her left — was with him, sitting at the long table, sipping fine wine, dressed most decorously.
‘Not a moment too soon, John,’ Cecil said brightly, as he was ushered in. ‘I understand you have had a wasted journey to Gaynes Park.’
Shakespeare bowed. ‘Sir Robert.’ He nodded to the Spanish woman in acknowledgement of her presence. Dona Ana…’
‘We have a deal, John. Clarkson is fetching the first sum. Eight hundred pounds in gold, for the information supplied to you by Dona Ana and the old nurse. I know you agreed a lesser sum, but I have increased it as a gesture of goodwill. There will be a further sum of three thousand pounds in the event that she can discover the whereabouts of the said prince and bring the information to us.’
A thought struck Shakespeare: Perez had known all along what Ana Cabral was about — the furtive meeting with the old nurse at dead of night. It was his way of not losing face by being seen to accept a far lower offer. And Perez was political enough to understand that Cecil would pay a great deal more to discover the greater part of the knowledge — where to find their quarry.
‘I am pleased to hear it, Sir Robert.’
‘In the meantime I shall go to Greenwich to prepare the way for Don Antonio to be received at court. But it will have to be done quietly. The illusion must be kept that he is a guest of the Earl of Essex and not of England. This is no time to poke our enemies in the eye.’
Cecil’s retainer, Clarkson, arrived at the doorway with a pouch of gold on a silver platter. Eight hundred pounds — more than a skilled artisan would earn in a lifetime. He bowed low, then presented it before Sir Robert.
‘Well, Dona Ana, this is your reward,’ Cecil said, pushing the leather bag across the table to the Spanish courtesan. ‘Would you like an escort to take you back to Essex House?’
Cabral, smiling and confident, looked towards Shakespeare. ‘I think I need one, do I not, Mr Shakespeare? A weak woman alone with a bag of gold. You have cutpurses aplenty in this city, I am told.’
‘I am certain you can look after yourself, but in this case, I would agree it would be wise to have guards accompany you.’
‘Handsome young guards who can dance the volta, I hope…’
Cecil ignored her. ‘That is settled. If you would go with Mr Clarkson, he will arrange an escort of six guards for you.’
Cecil and Shakespeare made much of their farewells and expressions of gratitude to Ana, then the old retainer led her from the room, clutching her weighty purse of gold as though it were welded to her small hands. Cecil’s light-hearted mask dropped and his manner stiffened.
‘You must find this prince, John. I do not trust that woman, nor her master, to bring us the information we need.’
‘Do you now believe this prince exists, Sir Robert?’
‘I would wish it were not so, but…’
