License to Quill (14 page)

Instead, the playwright looked to his side and raised his gloved left hand. “I wasn't talking to you,” he corrected with conviction.

Shakespeare turned back to Percy and stared at him, undaunted. His opponent's eyes widened madly, but the bard's narrowed with focus. He was no longer sweating under his shirt, and his pulse had steadied. Within his mind's eye, the dramatist turned the Duck and Drake into his stage. “‘That won't be necessary.' That's what I told Essex's agents when they asked me to perform
Richard II
. I knew it was a dangerous play; I wrote it that way, and the earl's men wanted me to perform what we both knew was its most dangerous scene. I had every idea what they were up to, and they offered me some extra silver to do the job. Instead, I handed them their money back. ‘That won't be necessary,' I said. I told them their performance was on the house. I
wanted
them to succeed.”

Seeing that he had his audience's attention, Shakespeare looked at everybody at the table. “Do not think me soft, my brothers. I know what your intentions are. I know how you plan to use my play, and I am happy to play my part in your endeavor. Just know that if you wish to succeed where Essex failed, it will take a lot more than just a play. You will need an army to deliver England from the Protestant rabble defiling her.”

With those words, all six men seated at the Duck and Drake fell silent. The falling snowflakes in the windows and flickering fires were the only movement in the room. Shakespeare breathed slowly through his nostrils to quiet his quickening pulse. The bard was gambling with his life to win the information Walsingham needed from these men, but he refused to show it. The veteran actor masked his fears behind a face that exuded nothing but total confidence. It was the only way he could steal the stage at the Duck and Drake from his critics. Without saying a word, the dramatist had to convince these men that the performance they had just witnessed was not an act.

The gambit worked.

If Robert Catesby had any doubts about William Shakespeare before they met, they had just been obliterated. A smile spread across his face. The bard had completely won him over. “We ride for Warwickshire in two days to meet with our northern allies. Would you care to join us, brother? A man of your esteem could serve us well there.”

The intensity faded from Shakespeare's face. “Warwickshire?”

“Of course! It's as much my homeland as it is yours. Come with us! We could continue our fathers' legacy. We could finish the work they started there.”

The playwright hesitated. “But there are no armies in Warwickshire. If we knocked on every door in every town and village, we wouldn't be able to recruit enough fighters to fill this tavern.”

“Who said we were visiting towns or villages?” Guy Fawkes smiled.

Shakespeare stared at the grinning men, bewildered. “Where else is there to go?”

“Into the wild,” the conspirator replied.

“We're going into the woodlands to meet the cunning folk. We've met with them before.” Robert's eyes were glowing with excitement. “They are with us!”

The bard breathed deeply at this revelation. “Witches?” he whispered. “You recruited witches?”

Robert and Guy Fawkes nodded. “They have an army,” the latter boasted. “They've been amassing one for years; ever since King James forced their sisters out of Scotland. They use their healing arts to attract countless followers throughout the country, people we never could have recruited otherwise. All the travelers, outlaws, highwaymen: the cunning folk united them into a single horde. They can outlast plagues and winters, and their numbers thrive while England's dwindle. They are everywhere, and they are nowhere. No one will see them coming!”

“I have no doubt,” the bard replied with an uneasy smile. “But … even if you conquered the entire Isles with your allies, how would the world react to such an army? The Church will think us blasphemers. All the countries of Europe will invade England!”

“No, they won't,” Fawkes assured. “We have an ally in the Vatican.”

“Who?”

“Cardinal Alessandro de' Medici,” Robert touted. “He has already assured us that the Church will protect us from any enemies.”

“De' Medici?” Shakespeare gasped. The architects of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, the bard did not need to mention. It was the worst of all the religious massacres in the past century, claiming tens of thousands of French Huguenots. Francis Walsingham was Elizabeth's ambassador in Paris at the time, and he had only barely escaped with his life as the city was strewn with Protestant bodies. Due to the French queen mother Catherine de' Medici's prominent role in the atrocity, the House of Medici had become synonymous with mass murder in England. “You are working with the Medici?”

Robert grinned brightly. “They have blessed us!”

“Rest assured, Master Shakespeare…” Guy Fawkes hissed smugly, “once we have control of our homeland, we will decide what role the cunning folk play in it, if any.”

At that moment, the bard was convinced that these men were playing too many games of political chess at once. They carried themselves like knights and bishops, but in reality, Shakespeare was sitting at a table peopled with pawns. “And who exactly is Alessandro de' Medici?”

“The next pope,” said Guy Fawkes. “Believe me, my brother, there are greater forces at work right now than even you can imagine.”

Shakespeare smiled softly at the faces leering at him. Fawkes was not bluffing, the bard realized.
Walsingham was right!
Something foul was afoot in England, and whatever it was, it extended far beyond the Duck and Drake. The bard had to ride with these men to Warwickshire. But … He glanced at Thomas Percy.… Would that mean riding into an early grave? Percy had the audacity to silence Fawkes and even Robert throughout their meeting. The man was clearly mentally unwell and far beyond their control. If the bard committed just one error under his watch during their trip, Percy would have Jack Wright murder Shakespeare on the spot. The bard knew he was no match for Wright with steel: he would have to fire the pistol hidden in his rapier, revealing his identity to everyone. And even if Shakespeare somehow killed all the conspirators at Warwickshire—or that night at the Duck and Drake—the conspiracy would continue. If the Medici were involved, actors like Fawkes and Catesby would be easily replaced.

The bard had no choice but to monitor the conspiracy from a distance. “You say you ride in two days?” he asked Robert.

“Yes. On Friday the twenty-second. Our journey to and from Warwickshire should take us a little under two weeks.”

Shakespeare grimaced. “That's a long time to travel. Can this meeting not wait until it gets warmer?”

“No,” entered Fawkes. “The cunning folk insisted that we meet them on March first. It has something to do with our calendar.”

The bard raised an eyebrow. “
Our
calendar?”

Fawkes raised his hands and shook his head. “I don't know. It probably has something to do with the moon and stars. They're mystics, you know.”

“Bloody heathens…” Percy grumbled.

“… who insisted that we meet them during the first hours of March,” Robert reminded to preserve the peace with their unseen allies.

“And they expect us to meet them in the woods? In this weather?”

“Alas,” Robert sighed, “we have no choice. These are their terms. Will you ride with us?”

The bard slowly rubbed his hands together to pantomime the approaching cold. “If that is the case, my brothers, then I know where my work will be more useful. It is not in Warwickshire, but here.” Shakespeare then turned to face his sweaty adversary once more. “Master Percy, your concerns are fair and justified. I apologize for my tardiness and I humbly beg your pardon.” The bard looked back at Robert. “With your permission, Master Catesby, I would like to stay in London to continue my writing. If the cunning folk are our allies, then I will give them a more prominent role in our play.”

Robert smiled and looked to Percy. “Are you happy now?”

The unhappy man sneered at Shakespeare but acknowledged: “Aye.”

Robert nodded. “In that case, may God bless you on your work, Will. I have no doubt you will make me proud.” The master of ceremonies rose from his chair and walked up to Shakespeare with open hands. As the bard hurried onto his feet, every other man stood up as well. Robert clasped the playwright with both arms and grinned brightly. “Let's make our fathers proud as well, Will. You do your part, and I'll do mine.”

The bard offered his hand. “Brothers?”

Robert looked down at the gloved hand and then up with teary eyes. “Master Shakespeare!” The leader of the conspiracy threw his arms around the playwright, and all the men watching broke out in applause.

William Shakespeare, the greatest playwright in England, was now officially a part of their plot. It was a union that Guy Fawkes made possible, and which the conspirator proudly presided over as godfather.

He was one of them now, the bard realized. Finally, he was in.

With Shakespeare's mission completed, the Dark Lady turned away from the tavern windows and spurred her horse back to the city.

 

Chapter XV

London Under Lockdown

After a heartfelt farewell at the Duck and Drake, the bard left the inn and stepped into the cold embrace of the winter evening. Although Robert had invited Shakespeare to spend the night with his men, the bard convinced him that he had already made accommodations elsewhere. It was a lie the playwright needed in order to leave the building alive, for if he told Robert the truth, that he was heading home, he would have been murdered at the Duck and Drake. London was under lockdown due to plague, and only someone well connected with the government could pass through its gates at this late hour. Guy Fawkes and Thomas Percy would have known this, which meant the bard had to be even more careful with his words in the coming months.

Across the street, a lone raven took to the darkened skies and monitored the bard from the snowy heavens.

Shakespeare wrapped himself in his black cloak and pulled down his hood. Once he was out of sight from the conspirators, he hurried along the icy Strand and into a nearby stable. He looked inside with a waiting lantern to find an old friend resting upright and snoring softly. After sweeping his footprints with a broom, the bard crept into the stable and patted the magnificent horse on his neck. “Sorry to wake you, Aston,” the bard whispered, “but it is time for us to leave.” Aston, rudely interrupted from his dream, snorted with frustration but otherwise obeyed his rider's request. The stallion walked out of his stall and, with Shakespeare mounted, the two disappeared like warm breath into the winter's wind.

When the plague first came to England in 1348, it killed nearly half the population. When it resurfaced twelve years later as the “children's plague,” another quarter of the kingdom perished. Death and disease had since become a reoccurring nightmare for the British Isles. The bard survived two outbreaks in his lifetime and was even born after a particularly deadly year. The most recent plight, in 1603, claimed more than thirty thousand Londoners, so with the disease back after so short an interlude, the government was taking no chances. The landscape was not yet pockmarked with plague pits, but the bard did notice more than one death cart collecting bodies for London's cemeteries. Shakespeare covered his mouth and nose as he passed a creaking wagon piled high with blackened corpses. When he saw one worker carrying a shovel over his shoulder, the playwright shuddered at the thought of digging graves in frozen soil.

The pestilence was everywhere.

Shakespeare spurred Aston along the Strand and continued eastward toward London. As he passed through the wooden archway of Temple Bar, he could hear the chains of shivering prisoners locked in the gatehouse. The bard left Westminster behind him at Temple Bar as the Strand turned into Fleet Street, which he followed across Fleet Bridge until he came to the torches of London Wall. As watchmen spotted the playwright approaching, Shakespeare lowered his head so that his hood completely concealed his face.

“Ho there!” one of the watchers of the Wall called out. The man stepped out from the Ludgate with a flaming torch in his hand. “The way is shut. Get out of here!”

Without a word, Shakespeare reached beneath his cloak and pulled out a piece of parchment. The bard sat motionless in his saddle with the note outstretched while a raven swooped down onto his shoulder. Bewildered, the sentry slogged through the falling snow and snatched the document from the silent rider. The guardsman was illiterate, but seeing Walsingham's wax seal on the paper was all it took to make his heart jump. The watcher looked at the rider and the raven, and then spun around waving his torch. The Ludgate raised it portcullis, and Shakespeare retrieved his paper from the stunned watchman as he rode past him.

As one of Walsingham's informants, the bard was permitted to enter London without so much as showing his face.

Back in the city, Shakespeare's raven took flight and disappeared alongside the tall and striking St. Paul's Cathedral, which was silhouetted against the glowing sky. Although fire destroyed its mighty spire decades ago, St. Paul's remained one of the largest churches in the city, stretching from one corner of the bard's eye to the other. He passed the cathedral on his right as he rode through its churchyard back onto Cheapside. The bard followed the otherwise teeming boulevard bumpy with frozen excrement and dead animals for three blocks before turning left onto Wood Street. Almost at home, Shakespeare quickened his companion for this final length in their ride. “This should warm you,” the bard encouraged as he and Aston galloped past four blocks of sleeping, snow-swept London until they reached the Cripplegate. Now at the northwestern edge of London Wall, Shakespeare reined his snorting charger beside a waiting watchman with a lantern. The man was one of Bacon's squires, and he was there to take Aston back to the Tower stables.