‘Yes.’ Beth was shaken. This man was in a bad way. She noticed that he was heavily armed: two wheel-lock pistols in his belt, as well as his sword and poniard. ‘Please, will you first tarry awhile and partake of victuals. Some meats and wine…’
‘There is no time. Just do as I say, mistress — Beth.’
‘As you will, John. Follow me.’
She took him to the withdrawing room, a chamber of intimate comfort with lustrous drapes, deep cushions, sumptuous settles and tapestries, all finished with red and gold threads. ‘Wait here, John. If she is with a client, I will bring her away and return in a few minutes.’
A maid brought him a goblet of sweet wine and he downed it in one gulp. Beth reappeared two minutes later. ‘Lucy will be here presently.’
Shakespeare nodded curtly in acknowledgement.
Her eyes went again to the wheel-locks adorning his waist. ‘Are you expecting to need those?’
‘He gave me the slip once before. It won’t happen again. Where is he?’
‘Within the city wall by Aldersgate. St Anne’s Lane. No more than a mile. I will take you to the very house. You may ride and I will walk at your side.’
‘And you are certain he will be there?’
‘If not, we will find another way to him. I will not let you down, John.’
Lucy appeared at the doorway. Last time she had worn a gown of gold, now she was in an array of cream linens, which served all the more to accentuate the black sheen of her skin. She held herself erect and proud, her shoulders back. Yet today there was a difference. She was less at ease. She did not smile. ‘Mr Shakespeare,’ she said, a note of surprise and some disquiet in her voice.
Shakespeare offered no greeting. ‘I am going with Beth Evans to find Glebe. Before I go, I wish to talk with you. It is important for you to realise, mistress, quite how precarious is your position, given your refusal to tell me the whereabouts of Glebe. I must tell you that I have already shown the greatest forbearance towards this house. I could have had pursuivants here to tear the place apart and wrench the information from your mouth by force, and the Privy Council would have thanked me for it. I say that to you now not as a threat but as a warning; nothing must come between me and Glebe. The stakes are raised in this game.’
Lucy lowered her eyes. ‘I understand.’
‘Do you?’
‘I do, sir. I will not hinder you in any way. I know about the incident in the Dutch Market…’
Shakespeare cut her short. ‘You will not talk of that. I have some questions regarding your person. Answer me straight, do not dissemble and do not ask me why I wish to know these things.’
‘Very well.’
‘Which country are you from?’
If she was puzzled by the nature of the question, she did not show it. ‘Africa. My father was an Ethiop, but my brothers and I were taken slave by Mussalman corsairs. They sold me to a great lord of France. I do not know what became of my two brothers.’
‘Who was this French lord?’
‘The son of Jean de la Fin, Seigneur de Beauvoir-la-Nocle, whom you know as Henri of France’s ambassador to the court of Elizabeth.’
‘His son is the Vidame de Chartres. Are you saying you were his slave?’
‘That is so. Did you not know this?’
‘Mistress Lucy, just answer my questions. What were you to him as a slave? A housemaid, a concubine — what?’
‘You may ask him that yourself, Mr Shakespeare, for is he not now here in England?’
Shakespeare ignored the question. ‘How did you come to England?’
Lucy’s eyes shone in the candlelight. ‘Yet more corsairs! This time under the English flag. One of Captain Hawkins’s fine ships-of-war took me while I was en route to Harfleur. I think the sailors were beguiled by my beauty and brought me to England and freedom rather than sell me on to the Spanish planters in the Indies. So now I am a free Englishwoman and happy to be of service to this proud nation.’
Shakespeare looked at her with a dubious, inquiring eye.
‘You do not have slavery here, I believe. I am told that three hundred years of serfdom left a bitter taste and that you do not allow it.’
‘But you are not English, and you must know that the Queen believes there are too many men and women of your hue here. She has ordered that Moors and Ethiops be cast out. Do you know anywhere — any friends — with whom you might stay awhile? For your safety.’
Lucy stood to her full height and tilted up her chin. ‘I understand what you are saying, sir, but take a look at my face. Do you think it possible to hide such a face anywhere in this land?’ She pursed her generous lips, almost in a kiss. She looked to Beth Evans, then back at Shakespeare. ‘I think I know enough men of power to protect me.’
‘Do you, mistress? Are you not afraid?’
Lucy turned again to Beth. ‘What do you say, Beth?’
‘I’d take you over a tiger any day, Luce.’
As he rode southwards and eastwards towards Aldersgate, thoughts of Catherine intruded. Dark, unholy visions. He saw her bloody remains all dressed in a green velvet gown. He saw her black hair adorning a white- boned, smiling skull, from which stared two piercing blue eyes.
She had not been a saint, and nor had he. Their marriage, more than five years long, had been difficult. She had been stubborn, unyielding in her Papism. At times, in truth, he had resented her for wrecking his career with Walsingham. He might have been a minister of the Crown by now. Many another man would have beaten her for her intransigence, her disobedience and her sullen moods.
He felt Beth Evans’s arms around his waist. Sweet, easy Beth. She had laughed the summer long when they were both sixteen in the year ’75. She laughed without spite at his seriousness; laughed lewdly when they saw a bull with an enormous prick mount a cow in a field; laughed mockingly when he panicked that he would not get her home before dark in the long, light evenings; laughed with incredulity at his refusal to drink too much strong cider; laughed tenderly at his clumsy moves towards kissing her.
But Catherine, so very different, was the one he loved. In the good times, of which there were many, they soared together. When they talked over a platter of meat and when they drank wine together, they were the best of argumentative friends. It was a love like no other, but it was not one he would have chosen for peace of mind; it had hit him with the force of a flood tide or tempest and had carried him along with it. Like a ship at sea, all he could do was run with the storm. This love had immersed him in its raging passions and thrown him in its wild wind, had done with him what it willed. It was untamed, raw and delirious in its uncontrollable beauty. That was Catherine Shakespeare. He could never have loved Beth like that.
At the city gate, a large draywagon had lost a wheel and collapsed, spilling its load of seasoned building timbers. Even those on foot struggled to get through the blocked thoroughfare. Dozens of carts and wains were backed up for almost a mile to the north along broad Aldersgate Steet, and to the other side, too, deep into the narrow alleyways of the city. Shakespeare was having none of it. He rode on past the crowds and horses, pushing any protesters aside with his cry of ‘Queen’s business, make way!’ At the gate, he and Beth dismounted and they walked the horse across the great oak logs, roundly cursed by the workmen who were trying to hoist them away.
‘Down here,’ Beth said when they were clear at last. ‘This alley on the left.’
They tethered the horse outside a modest and anonymous wood-frame house, the middle of a terrace of three, with jettied floors jutting out exaggeratedly into the dark little street.
Quickly, he loaded and primed both wheel-lock pistols and looped a binding cord around his chest. ‘Wait here,’ he said to Beth. ‘If I’m not out in ten minutes, fetch the constable.’
She watched him go. Just before they left, Lucy had told her that John’s wife was dead, killed by the explosion of gunpowder in the Dutch market. She had gone cold with shock. ‘Be careful with your friend,’ Lucy had said. ‘He will want vengeance. Do not get in his way.’
Walstan Glebe pulled the last copy of his new broadsheet from the press and held it up, waving it to help dry the ink. In his mouth he had a pipe of tobacco, which he sucked on like a babe at the teat.
