Many have died for their sovereign. How many sovereigns have died for their subjects?’
Shakespeare laughed and shook his head. ‘Your tongue, mistress. I thank the Lord these walls do not have ears…’
Catherine rose from the table. ‘Wait, I have something to make you yet more discomfited.’ She went through to the hall while he sat with his wine.
The Shakespeares lived in a great wood-frame house by the river Thames in Dowgate. They had turned the house into a school for the poor boys of London, but it was still closed as a result of the pestilence that had taken hold last summer. The city’s mort-bills for the year of 1592 recorded that more than ten thousand souls had been claimed by the plague; this year the city fathers feared it would be as bad or worse. Shakespeare took another sip of wine. Perhaps it was just this decline of England that was getting to him: the rising prices, the unrest, the endless war with Spain, the worry that the school would never reopen, his fears for the future of their daughter, Mary, and for their adopted children, Andrew and Grace.
Catherine returned with a tattered broadsheet for her husband. As she leant over him to place it on the table, he reached out and clasped her breast in his hand. She laughed lightly, let her long dark hair fall about her face and moved her slender body towards him to close her mouth on his.
‘Stirring again, Mr Shakespeare?’ she said as their mouths parted and her own hand came to rest in his lap. ‘Time for bed, I think.’
He tried to smile at her, but it was difficult to shut out the darkness that seemed to envelop him. Her blue eyes held his brown eyes for a moment, then she kissed him quickly once more before pulling away from his clasping hand. ‘Read that, then bed.’
Shakespeare turned to the paper. It bore the title The London Informer and comprised one sheet, written in poor verse. He went cold as he read it. ‘Where did you get this, Catherine?’ he asked at last.
‘Close by the Dutch market, John. I was visiting Berthe. There were two sellers. I thought their proximity to the market deliberate.’
‘This is bad. Cecil will not be happy.’
The broadsheet was a noxious attack on the Dutch and German refugees in London. It accused them of working secretly for Spain, of taking English trade and English work, of seeking to invade and occupy the country by stealth. Worse, it spoke in gloating terms of the explosion outside the Dutch church and said there would be more such attacks — ‘and next time the real dogs will die’. It was signed Tamburlaine’s Apostle.
‘This is Glebe’s work,’ Shakespeare muttered. ‘Have I told you of Walstan Glebe? He is a most villainous purveyor of filth. I thought we had broken up his London Informer press — we should have broken him instead.’
‘I recall you speaking of him.’
‘He has a brand on his forehead — an L for Liar. I had hoped he was dead by now.’ He sighed. ‘But then again, it gives me a start. He knows something. I’ll find him and bring him in.’
Shakespeare had been thinking hard about how to tackle the investigation. The first thing he had done was call his assistant Boltfoot Cooper to the library on the first floor.
As usual, Cooper had looked out of place as he shuffled into the fine room, dragging his deformed left foot. He seemed to be growing shorter and more knotted as he approached forty.
‘Master?’
‘I have a mission for you, Boltfoot. I want you to go to the powdermills.’
Boltfoot was silent. He and Jane had a child, a boy of eight months. He did not like leaving them.
‘I know what you are thinking, Boltfoot. And you are right. This will take you from your family. You will need several days, perhaps a week or more. It is vital work. You know of the powder explosion at the Dutch church? Your task is to discover the source of the powder. It was almost certainly bought or stolen from a mill. Question the mill-keepers and workers. They will not admit selling powder illegally and will be reluctant to admit their safeguarding is so lax that a thief could gain access to it. Start with Rotherhithe. If you do not discover inconsistencies there, head for Bromley-by-Bow and the others. You will not be alone. The Royal Armoury is arranging assistance; a powder expert named William Sarjent. I am told he is a good man. He will meet you at Rotherhithe. I have full details here.’ He handed over the paper Bedwell had passed to him. ‘Ask them this, too: have cargoes gone missing en route by road or river? Has any man been dismissed or charged for dishonesty? Demand assistance on pain of arrest.’
Boltfoot grunted. ‘What of the Royal Armoury itself, master? There is gunpowder aplenty there.’
‘I am assured from the highest level that it is not the source. If all else fails I will go there. But in the meantime I have other inquiries to make. Set forth at dawn — and go armed.’
In bed, Catherine was tender. She enticed him in with soft words and practised movements of her belly and thighs, but tonight Shakespeare was a different animal to her, frenzied and ungiving, hard and dispassionate.
They made love twice. Her yielding warmth soothed him and her fondling words and whispered kisses drew much of the anger out of him. Yet there was still tension there, and she sensed it.
He lay back, sated, on the downy cushions and gazed into the black night. Their breathing subsided.
‘I keep thinking of Poley,’ he said. ‘I know him too well. Marlowe’s death smells like six-day fish.’
‘Tell me of him, John.’
‘No. You need sleep.’
They lay there a minute. Neither of them would sleep soon.
‘Death and deceit follow him like a pair of hungry dogs,’ Shakespeare said quietly. ‘Walsingham used him to incriminate the Babington plotters in their conspiracy to murder the Queen and free Mary of Scots. But whose side was he really on? I never knew. I don’t think Mr Secretary was certain either. Even when Poley was imprisoned in the Tower, it is said he was employed to kill a bishop with poisoned cheese. But who was the paymaster?’
Catherine curled up against him, her dark hair across his chest. Shakespeare stroked her head.
‘Is he Catholic or Protestant, or neither?’ he went on, as much to himself as to her. ‘He was poor but now he lives in splendour, though he has no honest trade. I think he has won gold from all sides. What is his connection to Marlowe — a shared interest in intelligencing or the common bond of coining?’
‘Coining, John?’
‘Marlowe had already been implicated in forging coin in the Low Countries; is Poley in the same line? Is that what this is about? Was the widow Bull’s room a den of counterfeiters? Was the death nothing but a falling-out among thieves? A brabble and brawl about the proceeds of some crime? Or something yet more sinister…’
He knew Catherine was happy to hear him out. She would employ her wit and learning to make some sense of all he said. These were the times when they were at their closest, when they worked as confederates to solve a puzzle.
Yet not this night. A sudden noise shattered their peace. It came from the street outside their chamber. A splintering of wood, then shouting and hammering.
Shakespeare was up from the bed in a second and throwing open the shutters to look out of the window down on to the road. There were men there with pitch torches, storming through the broken front door of his neighbour’s house.
Catherine was up, too, at his side. ‘What is it, John?’
‘Pursuivants.’
Quickly, he threw on his doublet over his bare chest and pulled on breeches. ‘Stay here, Catherine.’
Barefoot, he ran down the oaken stairs, through the hall, into the courtyard and out into Dowgate. Two armed men with torches were now standing guard outside the neighbouring house. The building was older than the Shakespeares’ home and almost as large. It was a stone-built city home for merchants and dated back a hundred years or so. Most recently, it had come into the possession of a wool merchant from Antwerp. They seemed good people who doffed their hats in the street and said good day in strongly accented English, and yet he did not know their names nor anything about them, save that they seemed wealthy and respectable.
There was shouting from within the house. Shakespeare marched up to the front door and saw that it had been stove in by a battering log, for it was lying flat in the hallway.
‘What is this? What has happened here?’ he demanded of the guards as he tried to peer inside.
‘Hunting for rats,’ one of the men said, dourly. He held a drawn sword. ‘What’s it to you?’
Shakespeare noted the Queen’s escutcheon emblazoned on the man’s jerkin. ‘I am an officer to Sir Robert Cecil and these people are my neighbours, that is what it is to me. Now let me pass.’ He stepped forward. As he did
