‘I confess that I, too, am going to leave, Mr Shakespeare,’ Jan Sluyterman said. ‘It is too dangerous to keep young children here. They are always the first to die when King Pest arrives.’
Shakespeare had no argument with the Dutchman’s decision. He, too, was planning a departure. He would take Andrew, Grace and Mary to Stratford for the summer. Boltfoot, Jane and their baby, too. Cecil had suggested it. ‘You must have time with them. And you must find yourself a woman to help you. No man can raise three children alone.’
‘I have my servant Jane to help,’ Shakespeare had said shortly. He wanted no woman to replace Catherine. But, yes, he did wish time with the children. They were growing fast and they did not know Stratford, where he had been born and brought up. It would be good to take them there, while his parents yet lived.
Now, here, in the Sluytermans’ garden, he nodded in agreement with his host. ‘Yes, I will do the same.’
The garden was cool, with good shade from an array of well-tended trees: birch and young oak, hornbeam and ash. Shakespeare and Boltfoot were sipping Dutch brandy with Sluyterman. Boltfoot looked ill at ease. His back was still scorched. The mere touch of the cloth of his shirt could make him wince. Further down the garden, the young Sluytermans were playing with Shakespeare’s three children. It was Sunday and morning prayers were done.
Shakespeare’s eyes followed the servant girl, Susanna, as she carried a jug of cordial to the children.
‘She is well, Mr Shakespeare,’ Sluyterman said. ‘We are pleased to have her once again in our home. There has been too much suffering. I owe you a great deal for all your help. More than I can ever repay, I fear.’
‘I believe you had some knowledge of Curl?’
‘That Curl, yes, I recall him well. I had hoped never to hear his name or see him again when we parted company two years since. Was ever a man so ill-named? Holy Trinity… ha!’
‘You believe he deliberately put the servant Kettle into your home?’
‘I do, Mr Shakespeare, I do, indeed. He wished to find an excuse for calling in Mr Topcliffe and the pursuivants. It was all done in vengeance for some perceived ill done him. Yet he, Curl, was the faithless servant.’
‘What were your dealings with him?’
‘He was a wool factor, but he had little success. He asked to work for me as an agent, saying he could supply good grease wool in great quantities. I was uncertain at first, but then he brought me samples and I agreed to his terms, for wool is difficult to come by for export. I knew I could sell it for good profit in the Low Countries, where there is a great demand. Their home supply has been much disrupted by the wars. This worked well for both of us for two months, no more. Then I realised he was cheating me. He took me for a gull. I did not know it at first, but the wool he shipped was mostly of poorer quality than he had first shown me, and I received complaints from my buyers. I found, too, that he had been charging me for greater quantities than he supplied, so I severed my links with Mr Curl. He was angry with me, but what could I do?’
Shakespeare said nothing. It was a lamentable story which, through a cruel twist of fate, had caused Catherine to be in the Dutch market with Susanna at the very moment that a cask of gunpowder exploded.
Jan Sluyterman shook his head mournfully and repeated, ‘What could I do?’
Suddenly, Shakespeare realised that Boltfoot was looking at him curiously, as though he had something to say. ‘Boltfoot?’
Boltfoot looked away, then took a hefty swig of the brandy. ‘Eases the pain, master.’
‘I thought for a moment you wished to say something.’
‘Just that.’
‘What was that, Boltfoot, that look you gave me?’ Shakespeare asked quietly as they walked the short distance home a little later.
‘Master?’
‘I know you well enough, Boltfoot. That look wasn’t pain. There was something else — something you wished to say.’
‘I do not wish to speak out of order.’
‘God’s blood, Boltfoot, speak your mind.’
Boltfoot shifted uneasily, looking down at his club foot. ‘I do not know at all whether I should be saying this, for it do sound bad, and I know Mr Sluyterman to be a good man, or at least I believe I do. But I did hear another version of that story of him and Holy Trinity Curl.’
Shakespeare stopped. He stood in the middle of the dusty road and tried in vain to look Boltfoot in the eye. ‘And from whom did you hear this story?’
‘From Curl himself, after they had discovered me. I couldn’t stop him, no man could. The tale came out of his mouth in every last detail. He foamed at the mouth with venom as he told me what he thought of Mr Sluyterman and said what he had supposedly done to him.’
‘Tell me.’
At last, Boltfoot looked up and met his master’s gaze. ‘The way Curl told it, he was a successful wool merchant when along comes Sluyterman and suggests they join forces. Curl is to supply the English wool, just as Sluyterman said just now, and Mr Sluyterman will sell it on. But that’s where the similarity in the tale ends. For Curl said he was not Sluyterman’s servant at that time, but an equal partner, and he says that bit by bit he was cheated out of his share of the concern and was left impoverished. In the end, he had to go a-begging for work to Mr Sluyterman…’
‘And?’
‘He was given a job in the counting house, as a ledger clerk, dealing with bills of lading at twelve pence a day. That was scarce enough for him and his wife and two young children, but at least they ate. But that was not the end of it. He said Mr Sluyterman dismissed him in the winter of ’90, claiming he had made misrepresentations in the ledger, though as Curl tells it he had always been honest. After that, Curl could find no work and was brought to such a turn of poverty that he and his family lost the roof over their heads. The children, cold and hungry, took sick and died. His wife cut her own throat. Curl heard later that his job of work in the counting house had been given to a nephew of Sluyterman newly arrived from the Low Countries, which he believed to be the real reason he was dismissed. Now I have no way of knowing whether any of that is true, Mr Shakespeare, but I tell you this: I did believe it at the time of being told.’
Shakespeare did not know what to say. Had he been so wrong about Sluyterman? It was an uncomfortable, troubling thought, and one that was difficult to accept. Yet it would undoubtedly explain why Curl was so fervent in his loathing of the Dutch strangers. He stood there in the street. Above him, swallows swooped and soared. The fragrance of summer flowers drowned the foul city hum, yet his mouth had a bitter taste of rising bile. He wanted to return to Sluyterman’s house and put it to him directly.
It was Boltfoot who stayed him. ‘There is nothing to be gained, master. That is why I said nothing.’
Was that it? Was no one honest in this city of thieves and whores? He nodded briskly to Boltfoot. ‘You are right.’ He turned back and strode the last few paces to his own open door. Ahead of him the children were laughing and skipping, full of the delights of their afternoon at play. He shut the door behind him and enclosed himself in his own world. At least there was beauty and decency here.
The London Informer, July 1593
KING PHILIP AND A PRINCELY LIE
Fair reader, while London suffers the darkness of Satan’s foul pestilence, secure in the faith that the Lord’s light will prevail, we have at last a sunbeam of news. Sooth to say, it is news of no news, but it is a fine thing for all that. We have learned on the greatest authority that the recent scurrilous report of some Scottish prince is naught but perfidy, wrought by our enemies in Spain.
This fanciful princeling was but the fevered reverie of Senor Felipe and his cringing, timorous lickspittles. Their wish was to sow discord and unrest in England, but this enterprise, like the Armada before it, has failed in every degree. This imagined son of the devil Mary and her viperous partner in murder, Bothwell, is as substantial as the air itself. That is, no substance at all. He does not exist and never has. This prince was a fantasme, designed to
