Shakespeare's Rebel, Page 2

  ‘My . . . my lord, a word.’ The tremulous voice that came was that of the earl’s steward, Gelli Meyrick. On a nod, the man continued, his Welsh tones heightened by the strain. ‘You have oft asked me, look you, that I counsel you when . . . when impatience rules your honour. Even at the risk of your displeasure’ – he swallowed – ‘I so counsel now.’ He pointed back the way they’d come, across the valley dotted with the bodies of Spanish cavalrymen and riderless mounts, to the slight rise beyond where forces were mustering. ‘I see my lord of Effingham’s standard there. He brings the main body. If we were to wait, look you . . .’

  ‘Wait?’ roared Essex. ‘Is that your counsel? Wait for my lord Charles to march up and steal my glory? I piss on him and any waiting.’ He finished loading the pistol, snapped its steel down, thrust it into his cross belt, began loading another. ‘What say you, Master Lawley?’

  John looked up from his own loading and into the younger man’s eyes. They were maddened, within the streakings of black powder. Yet somewhere in the heart of them was also the misgiving Essex ever had. He gave every man’s doubts an ear and could be swayed by them. Or woman’s – a queen’s slight would send him to his bedroom for a month. But John also knew this well enough: Essex would rather be dead than cede an ounce of glory to any other.

  John glanced around at the other men, clutching pistols, hefting swords. While blood was up, they may as well act. First glory – if they survived – but first pickings too in a town as rich as Cadiz. His share would solve a lot of problems back home. Rich enough, it might even persuade Tess to marry him. ‘I am game if you are, good my lord.’

  ‘I am. Oh, I am!’ Essex looked around at other expectant faces. ‘And you, stout hearts? Are you with us?’

  ‘Aye,’ came the shout.

  Pistols loaded, armour adjusted, a man, one Robert Catesby, leaned forward. ‘Master Lawley, I heard a strange rumour of you: that you are, as well as a famed warrior, a player of some note. Is it true? Have you strutted the platforms of England?’

  Plus a few on the Continent, thought John. But it did not feel like the right moment to detail his curriculum vitae. So he simply nodded and said, ‘I have.’

  ‘Well, sir, in my experience of ’em – and I am particularly fond of Edward Alleyn’s performances at the Rose.’ John rolled his eyes. ‘Well, sir, could you not give us some speech of fire from the repertoire. Some warrior’s words to see us through the wall and among the enemy? Tamburlaine’s, perhaps? Or even our majesty’s illustrious grandfather and his words at Bosworth?’

  Marlowe or Shakespeare? John thought. He had played them both, of course. He had his loyalty to the brother of his soul, William, and his preference. Yet truly, he cared little for recitation unless there was coin in it. So now he glanced at Essex, just finishing the loading of his last pistol. With his red beard stained with black powder, someone else’s blood on his cheek and a dancing light in his eye, he looked like the youth John had first met ten years before.

  John leaned forward. ‘Nay, lads, why hearken to some false and foreign hero from the playhouse when you have a true and native one before you? And when our commander writes verse as inspiring as any?’

  Essex shrugged, entirely failing to look modest. ‘Aye, good my lord’ and ‘We pray you, do’ rang out.

  The earl looked slowly around, then nodded. ‘Then see here,’ he said, rising to one knee and drawing his sword. ‘This weapon that I carry is the very one carried beside me into battle ten years since by my brother in arms, the brother of my heart, Sir Philip Sidney.’ A sigh came. ‘That was a day, Master Lawley, was it not?’

  It was not the hour for memory but for myth, so John simply gave the nod required and the earl continued. ‘At Zutphen in the Netherlands it was, and three thousand Spaniards marching to relieve the town while I . . . I had but three hundred mounted Englishmen to stop them. Yet I did not hesitate. With Sir Philip on my right arm, and John Lawley on my left, three times we charged, and rallied, and charged again.’ He paused, and his eyes filled. ‘Yet on that final charge, his blade becrimsoned in foemen’s blood, my brother took the musket ball that gave him his quietus.’

  He looked around at all the faces, those nearest, those others who’d drawn nearer as he spoke, and raised his voice to reach them. ‘He died in my arms two weeks later. He gave me this sword ere he did, and these words: “Never draw it without reason nor sheathe it without honour.” ’ He nodded. ‘I never have and I never will. And I will not on this day.’ He focused on one man. ‘So do not counsel that we wait for others, Gelli Meyrick. Do not seek fellow travellers on the path to glory. They will only get in our way.’ He looked around the circle. ‘This honour, and England’s glory, belongs only to us,’ he added, and holding the sword by the blade, he raised it up before him like a crucifix.

  Men reached out and placed their hands upon it, as if it were indeed the true cross. John only hesitated a moment, remembering well where that particular path of glory had led – to Philip Sidney’s tent, and the foul-sweet stench of gangrene as the poet-warrior died. Yet Essex had not only inherited the sword, he had inherited the mantle of the dead hero. Men would follow it, like a banner. Follow him.

  A voice from above. ‘All’s ready here, my lord,’ George Silver called.

  Essex stood, lifting the sword high. ‘For honour! For England! For St George!’ he cried.

  ‘Honour! England! St George!’ came the shout from two score throats.

  Smiling, Essex tipped his head back and shouted up, ‘Fire!’ drew one of his pistols, half cocked it. John did the same, readying himself.

  Above, the musketeers laid their weapons on the ramparts; a ragged volley was discharged. ‘Now, Goodman John?’

  ‘Now, my lord.’

  Both men went to full cock. At a nod, they thrust their pistols through the hole, pulled their triggers. Then, through the gunsmoke and side by side, they entered the city of Cadiz.

  The two who followed them died, Spanish gunmen rising from the crouch. But more Englishmen charged through, while others swung down on ropes from above. Briefly it was backswords and bucklers against rapiers and pike. Some of the enemy fought bravely. Most broke and fled down the narrow streets that gave on to the wall.

  ‘Follow! Halloo! Halloo!’ cried Essex, giving the hunter’s call. Somewhere a bugle echoed him – Lord Howard, Raleigh and the rest of the English army approaching fast. The chase was on along the path, and glory was the prize.

  The haypenny bed, Wapping. 1599

  ‘There’s something hard diggin’ into me.’

  ‘I thought he was too sottish for that. Foul bastard!’

  ‘Not in his breeches, ya simpleton. Higher up, about his chest.’

  ‘Dagger?’

  ‘Too small. Feels like . . . like a locket, mayhap.’

  ‘A locket?’ Fingers rasped on an unshaven jaw. ‘Let’s have it out. Perhaps it’ll fetch enough to pay us for this wretch’s thrashing that so marred our sleep.’

  ‘Do you stand by with your cudgel then, though I doubt he’ll stir. I’ll delve. Christ’s guts, but don’t he stink?’

  John heard the words, felt the fingers questing for the locket Tess had given him on a happier day. He should have sold it three days since, bought one last bottle of the water of life. Was her cruelty not the reason for the debauch, after all? Should she not share the cost? And yet he’d found he could not.

  It would take a better picker than this oaf to pull the jewel from him. So he had some moments to linger still, where the land was warm, and the cause clear.

  Cadiz. 1596

  They’d pushed too far, of course. Blood in their ears, its taint in their nostrils, fleeing backs, feeble stands brushed aside. They’d chased as far as the town’s central square, where someone had rallied the last of the defence. Too few, too late for the English army, whose bugles were sounding even then from the town’s main gate. Too many for Essex’s band, down to twenty, dwindled now by casualties and those who’d slunk
off to loot.

  A volley of sorts. Two more of their band on the cobbles and fifty of the dons running from the ranks, screaming, ‘Por el Rein! Por Dio. Por España!’

  ‘Back!’ shouted Essex, and it was the Englishmen’s turn at quarry. Down the alleys they’d stormed up, making for the walls again, John in step with Essex, Silver and the rest speeding ahead. No one was panicked. Bugles everywhere showed that the town was fully breached and would soon be theirs. Now, if they could only keep alive till that happened.

  ‘This is more like it, Johnnie,’ Essex cried, laughing as he ran. ‘Let’s lead these dons into a hot English welcome, then turn hound and chase them back again. I want to be the one to take their general’s sword.’ He laughed. ‘Though it will probably be a rapier and Silver will mock it.’

  John laughed with him . . . until they turned into another alley, a rare straight one, short enough for the rest of the party to have cleared its end as the earl and he were entering it. Yet just as they did, from a house halfway down stepped a half-dozen swordsmen. They had been waiting for the larger party of Englishmen to run past before emerging from their shelter. Seeing only two left, with a shout they drew their weapons and advanced.

  Boots on the cobbles behind. Their pursuers coming on fast, the two abreast that the alley allowed. There was but a moment to stand back to back, calculate the odds, note that they were poor, and act. ‘Here!’ John yelled and slammed his shoulder into a door to their side. The earl joined him. Under double assault the wood splintered then gave and they were falling into the front room of a house. A woman screamed, a child snatched up into her arms.

  ‘There!’ cried Essex, running for the doorway beyond. As their pursuers surged in, delayed by a bench John threw, the fleers took the stairs two at a time. But near the top, John slipped, a triumphant cry telling of an enemy close behind. He braced against a step, kicked back hard with both feet. Shod boots connected and a body was falling, blocking the stairwell. The earl reached, jerked him up. Together they leapt the last few stairs.

  Into the bedroom, mostly occupied by the large bed, posted in each corner and curtained. There was a window on to the street, large enough to squeeze through – but a glance showed John more dons below trying to push in. There was one other way out – a ladder rising to a shut trapdoor. ‘The roof!’ he called.

  Essex had his foot upon it when the first Spaniard ran into the room. But the moment he took to look around was a moment too long, John reaching him in an extended lunge, his backsword thrust straight, a slight turn of wrist guiding the Spaniard’s rapier over his own shoulder, while his point pierced the man’s throat. He reeled back with a choked scream, dropping his weapons, hands raised to clutch and fingers failing to stem the blood that ran between them. His fall was taking him to the door and John accelerated it, hitting him with his buckler, slamming the small round shield into the man’s spine. He tumbled out, into the man who was trying to get in, and for the moment the doorway was blocked by blood, body and scream.

  John turned. The earl was only halfway up the ladder, paused there. ‘Go!’ John yelled.

  ‘And leave you? Nay, I’ll stay.’

  ‘Then both of us will be ta’en, my lord. Let me hold them awhile and you escape.’ He saw the hesitancy on the younger man’s face, heard the shouting on the stairs, his victim’s heels thumping down ’em as he was cleared away. His comrades would be coming in moments.

  He made his voice softer. ‘When you have made good your escape, I will yield. When we hold the town, you can have me back for a small price. But if they take the real Earl of Essex, not his substitute’ – he gestured at their deliberately similar apparel – ‘the bargain may be harder to strike. And you would be in Lord Howard’s debt for ever.’

  The concept worked. The hesitancy vanished. Essex began to climb. ‘True words, Honest Yeoman,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I will return in arms.’

  His boots vanished and thumped swiftly overhead. ‘Nay, good my lord, you are most welcome,’ John muttered, a brief smile coming then leaving when two dons came through the door. These were ready for him, rapiers and daggers thrust before, tips close like steel gates before bodies held well back. The brief thought came: that Silver should be there, expostulating on the situation, lauding the superiority of short English blade and shield over foreign technique and fancies. It was a matter of some debate still among the fight masters of London.

  Yet he was not in London but in a bedroom in Cadiz, and technique could go hang. Principle was the key with this his sole one: stay alive long enough to make good the earl’s escape. Live himself afterwards.

  As the Spaniards came for him, he set about doing so.

  In the small part of his brain that was not focused on survival, he was aware of an irony here; for in his other life, the life he preferred, the life of the playhouse, one of his tasks had been to arrange the fights that occurred in most plays. And so, like players upon a stage, he set about organising his enemies’ moves. There were more of them crowding the top of the stair and, in good conscience, two were as many as he could handle, so he was determined to hold the combat near the door, and prevent entrance.

  As always, he watched their weapons. For all the firmness of their guard, he could see the men’s hesitancy – and that was not just because of the constant shiftings of their feet, a trait of your Spanish swordsman, forever dancing as they fought. Perhaps the sight of their comrade’s body thumping down the stair, gouting blood, made them pause. Perhaps being chased like rabbits through their own town. Whatever caused it, John could use it.

  And did. Raising his hilt above his head, blade angled down and diagonal across his body in true guard, he did not leave it there, but swept it in a tight circle, using only the wrist, the fastest form of attack. His weapon gathered theirs, rapiers and daggers, all four knocked aside for the moment John needed. As they stumbled sideways under the force of the heavier blade’s strike, John vaulted off his front foot, spinning around, using the pivot to bring his buckler sweeping across, smashing into one opponent’s cheek. With a cry he was down, sprawled across the doorway, John’s whole desire.

  But the other had leapt clear, regained his weapons, while the force of John’s spin, the buckler strike passing to the left, his sword out right, left his belly and chest wide. The Spaniard thrust with his rapier before he could withdraw that invitation, and only a leap back, and a rapid sucking in of waist, saved his life at the cost of a button. Parrying hard with a circling flick of sword, he gave back again as the man’s dagger went for his eye, deflected the swung sword over his head with his buckler. As it clanged into a bedpost, he thrust forward hard, like a pugilist punching, but the Spaniard eluded him with a slip of shoulder, then came again.

  John lost every thought save two: keeping the man before the doorway, and deflecting his assaults. All became blur, blows and thrusts given, warded, redoubled. The bedposts blocked both of them, the curtains snared blades until they were shredded by slashes. In but a few moments steel met steel twenty times or more and there was not time to consider anything but that. Until John became aware of life beyond the whirling blades, of movement again at the doorway, another opponent finally stepping through it . . . and behind him, the creak of rungs on the ladder.

  It would be typical of Essex, changeable as quicksilver, to come back. Forcing his opponent back with a whirl of blows, John risked both a look and words – though ‘My lor—’ was as far as he got. It was a Spaniard on the ladder, he’d just flung a cudgel and John had only enough time to turn his head so it did not strike him in the face. Yet it struck his temple well enough, and his helmet only made the blow ring louder.

  It did not send him entirely to oblivion, or at least not constantly. His eyesight was taken, sure, and what his other senses gave him was mixed. He heard an English bugle near, low-voiced commands, felt his body being lifted. There was street air and scents, blood in his mouth. Then a cooling breeze in the heat, salt tang, the sudden shock of his fa
ce on floorboards awash with seawater. The part of him hanging on to consciousness wondered if he was being taken back to the Due Repulse, felt gratitude at the thought. Until he heard the language the oarsmen were speaking. He understood few words of it, knew only that it was Spanish.

  ‘En nombre de Dio,’ he muttered.

  The haypenny bed, Wapping. 1599

  ‘What’s the dago bastard sayin’ now?’

  Enough, thought John. Further in memory and I will have too much of heat. It may be as cold as a nun’s tit in this Wapping tavern, but I would not trade it now to be warmed again beside the Inquisition’s fires.

  Besides, he could sleep no more – not when delving fingers had finally fastened on the locket. It was all he had left and he might still need to pawn it; though he’d rather keep it, as token of woman’s faithlessness. Either way he was buggered if he was going to let some amateur cutpurse have it.

  His eyes were still hard to open. When he finally managed it, he saw, silhouetted against the wooden slats of the tavern’s attic, the same object that had lately entered his reverie – a cudgel. Its wielder was not looking at his face but at his companion’s hand and what was emerging from within John’s doublet.

  ‘Bloody thing’s on a chain,’ the thief was saying. ‘Can’t . . . prise it . . . loose . . .’

  ‘Snatch the bloody thing off!’

  John wanted to say, ‘Can I help?’ But his throat was as gummed as his eyes and issued only a groan. It was enough to make the cudgel wielder look up, see his eyes were open, pull back the club to strike . . .

  Which took too long. John shot one hand up, grabbing the wrist, twisting, causing pain and the dropping of the weapon. His other hand wrapped around the thief’s head and he pulled the man’s face hard into his chest.

  He had them both – but he could not hold them long. The cudgel man was large and the cutpurse wiry, and both were jerking like hogs on a rope. Releasing them by flinging them back, John rose unsteadily from the three-man mattress. At once his head spun in concert with his stomach and he had to lean down, hands on his knees, taking breath.