License to Quill (21 page)

Shakespeare struggled atop his angered stallion. “You can see that I can't!”

“Can't, or shan't!”
Gamaliel shouted as he tied on his mask.
“I will teach your damned horse how to kneel!”
The Hobgoblin staggered onto his feet and raised his sword.
“Restrain the beast, or I'll slaughter him. I swear we'll make him our next meal!”

Seeing no other option that would safeguard his friend, Shakespeare raised his hands and quickly studied the snowy setting around him. He moved Aston under a tree and tied his reins to a tall branch—one that none of the bandits could reach without climbing into his saddle. He then patted his partner and slipped his boots from his stirrups. Shorthouse violently pulled the bard from his saddle before he could dismount. Aston, infuriated over seeing his rider fall, tried to free himself from his harness while Snell kept his crossbow pointed at the magnificent horse.

Shorthouse kicked Shakespeare on the ground and threw the playwright's hood back. As the bard looked up from the snow, his enemies got their first look at his uncovered face. The Hobgoblin's eyes widened with recognition, filling the edges of his mask's furrowed slits.
“Welly!”
he chirped.
“Welly, welly, my felleys! It seems that our victory's won … against none other than the great Bard in Avon!”

Shakespeare wobbled onto his feet with one boot strategically placed in the snow. “None other,” the famed playwright confirmed while Shorthouse stripped the bard of his rapier and telescope, which were both thrown to Snell. “Shall I perform for you?”

The masked villain guffawed.
“Do you hear this, my brothers? By all means, please do! Perform
The Jew of Malta
for us. Act one …
er …
scene two.”

The playwright's face froze. “
The Jew of Malta
is not one of mine,” he clarified. “It's Christopher Marlowe's.”

“Is Marlowe a no-no?”
the masked bandit teased.

The bard straightened himself and angrily smacked the snow from his cloak. “I won't do it.”

“You perform Morley poorly,”
the outlaw critiqued, shaking his head with sardonic disappointment.

“I knew Marlowe. He was a good man.…” The bard paused. “Actually, no. He wasn't. But he was a greater man than you are. And if he were here now”—Shakespeare's voice trembled—“he would have
laughed
at your ridiculous mask.”

The Hobgoblin slowly tilted his head. Shakespeare was trying to get under his skin with that comment, and it worked. The lecherous creature slinked up to the dramatist and pressed his bloodied sword to his cheek.
“What if I cut off your face, then? It would not be so hard. I could cast down the Hobgob' and henceforth be the Bard!”

Face to face with his enemy, the veteran actor did not budge; not even when the severed feathers from his former raven grazed his face. Instead, Shakespeare narrowed his eyes and smiled. Although Ratsey was wearing a mask, the playwright saw straight through his facade. The man was acting, and poorly. He relied too much on props which, frankly, paled in comparison to the ones his would-be victim had on him.

“How about some magic?” the dramatist offered instead. Shakespeare did not need to see Gamaliel's eyebrows to know that this lure hooked its prey.

The Hobgoblin asked.
“A magic trick?”
The bard nodded, and the bandit took a step back.
“Make it quick.”

Shakespeare straightened his sleeves and reached for the playing cards in his cloak. Although Shorthouse caught the bard by his hand, the dramatist was not threatened. “It's just an ordinary deck of playing cards.…” he offered with the usual flair. Shorthouse looked to his leader with suspicion, but the Hobgoblin allowed the playwright to continue. “A deck of cards…” the bard pledged to the men. “Each one filled with surprises.” Shakespeare tore open the knave of diamonds and emptied it into his palm. “Precious spices!” The bard poured the fine powder into the Hobgoblin's hands.

Gamaliel and Shorthouse sampled the spices and then looked up with surprise.
“Be there more, troubadour?”

“My dear sirs,” the bard grinned, “this whole deck contains spices galore!” This time, Shakespeare opened a few packs of poisonous spades and emptied them over the pile the Hobgoblin had. However, the bandit let the deadly stuff fall through his finger and seized the rest of the deck.
“We'll take your word for it, brother.”
Gamaliel handed the purloined prize to Shorthouse.
“That was a laugh! Do another!”

Although Shakespeare was smiling, his heart sank. He stared speechlessly at the bandits until Shorthouse poked inside the bard's cloak with his sword. “And what's that?” the bandit asked, tapping something hard with his saber.

“Something aglitter?”
the Hobgoblin hissed with a slither. The masked bandit stepped closer.
“It is gold! Bring it hither!”

The veteran actor successfully suppressed his smile. Shakespeare took his pocket watch from his belt and presented it to the mesmerized highwaymen.

“Amazing…”
Gamaliel gasped as he and Shorthouse beheld the machine.
“How does it function?”
asked the Hobgoblin as he reached for the trinket.

“With gumption!” Shakespeare smirked as he pulled the device back to wind it. He then offered the watch to the bandits while covertly removing its pin.

The Hobgoblin snatched the gold timepiece, and the bard innocently dropped its pin with an “Oops.” As Shakespeare bent down to pick it up, he seized the puukko knife Snell had dropped earlier and which the bard had been standing on this whole time. Shakespeare stabbed the Finnish blade straight into Shorthouse's boot, severing his Achilles tendon and bringing the hulking brute down.

The Hobgoblin cradled his timepiece.
“Kill him!”
he cried as the playwright made a mad dash back to Aston. As Snell turned his head from the horse, Shakespeare threw the puukko knife at the villain, striking him in the one eye he had left. The bandit stumbled backward and screamed while Shakespeare picked up his spyglass and sword and leaped back onto Aston. The bard freed his reins and spurred the charger out of the woods while pulling on the branch above him until it slipped from his grip. The branch swung backward and struck its neighbors, dropping a thick cloud of snow onto the bandits while Shakespeare and Aston made their escape.

However, just before the duo could emerge through the forest, the bard reined his horse to a harrowing halt. A second raven was flying in from the distance and screeching. And behind the raven, Shakespeare saw a dark figure riding toward him with a bow raised and drawn. The rider loosed an arrow straight past the playwright, striking Shorthouse in his ear. Horrified, the bard looked behind him and understood there was only one pathway left. He charged Aston back into the woods just in time to see Sir Francis Bacon's deadly watch detonate.

The timepiece exploded directly under Gamaliel Ratsey's face, blasting his jaw into jagged shards that embedded themselves onto the roof of his mouth. The villain screamed in agony and reached for his injuries only to realize the hand holding the watch had been reduced to a mangled stump. Ratsey could hardly see and barely breathe. Nearly all his teeth were blasted out of his skull. His whole mask had been blown off, taking his nose but otherwise preserving the upper half of his face. The once silver-tongued bandit could now only speak in mad gasps, for the tattered remains of his tongue were hanging free from his head. At long last, Gamaliel Ratsey was the hobgoblin he had always pretended to be, and as Shakespeare galloped back onto the scene, he had no choice but to run Ratsey over with Aston.

Deep down, the playwright hoped Aston's hooves might put the mangled man out of his misery. Instead, they only added to the Hobgoblin's torment within the frozen walls of the Arden.

 

Chapter XXIII

The Curse

“Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That poor soul has been sobbing for hours now.”

“No, that's not it. I heard a sound of thunder outside.”

“Thunder?”

“In this season?”

“These are a haunted woods, Robert. We should never have come here.”

“
You've
been sobbing about that for hours now. And sweating and stinking.”

“Shut your noise, Wright!”

“Make peace, you two! And Guido, please sit. You're upsetting the carriage.”

“I think we're close.”

A bright flash of lightning illuminated the forest, making all five conspirators turn their heads to their windows. It was snowing outside their carriage in white streaks that changed violently with the wind. The night skies pulsated in purple, and then erupted with a loud thunderclap that shook the coach and startled its horses.

“How is this possible?” Tom Wintour gasped.

“Black magic,” replied Percy. “Robert, God will condemn us to Hell for consorting with these demons.”

Robert stared sympathetically at his partner. “You know it is too late for us to turn back.”

Suddenly, a red glow filled the windows. The carriage stopped.

“We've arrived,” said Guy Fawkes.

“God save us,” sighed Robert.

Behind them, a snow-covered William Shakespeare lowered his spyglass.

*   *   *

For many years, the cunning folk were allowed to practice their arts throughout England without fear of reprisal from Parliament. All that changed under Henry VIII with the passage of the Witchcraft Act of 1542, which targeted England's witches and cunning folk with equal severity: death.
*
It was the first law in English history to define witchcraft as a capital offense, and although it was repealed five years later for its cruelty, first blood had already been drawn. A Reformation-fueled frenzy of witch hunts swept over England, taking many of the kingdom's thousands of cunning folk with it.

Although Elizabeth tried to remedy the situation with a more moderate stance against witchcraft,
†
the government and the church had become too dangerous for the cunning folk to contend with. Some disappeared into what remained of Britain's once plentiful forests. Others fled north only to be claimed by the even deadlier frenzy fanned by Scotland's King James VI. With Elizabeth dead and James now king of England, Ireland, and Scotland, Parliament's campaign against witchcraft had reached its greatest intensity. The Witchcraft Act of 1604 broadened the laws of King James's predecessors, making any consorting with the cunning folk more dangerous than ever.
*

As a result, it was no surprise to Shakespeare that Thomas Percy was not the only man sweating when the conspirators finally met with their Warwickshire allies.

By the time the bard caught up with his targets, night had fallen, bringing in storm clouds with it. Shakespeare did not know if he had eluded the dark rider hounding him, but he was too close to his enemies to risk revealing his movements. He found the conspirators by following an enormous fire in the forest, which he imagined had to be their final destination. It was. The men were so deep in the Arden that Shakespeare did not even know if they were still within Warwickshire. The skies crackled with electricity as a cold wind bellowed down from the heavens. A chaotic downpour of snow and ice coated his cloak. The bard had to wipe his lenses repeatedly as he studied the scene through his spyglass. Beside him, Aston was securely tied behind a tree lest a sudden flash of lightning reveal him to their enemies. Fortunately, just as Bacon promised, the silver stallion was unaffected by the storm and its thunder.

In the distance, the conspirators were standing outside of their carriage within a glade centered by a tall, roaring fire. A great stone lay flat in the melted snow by the flames, serving as an altar for the crucible and human skull atop it. As Shakespeare studied the skull, he could see the faint flicker of a candle inside it. A silhouetted wall of large men stood in front of the bonfire brandishing clubs, axes, and other cruel-looking weapons. And beside the men, three aged figures stood limply in tattered robes that seemed to resemble monks' habits. Although their hands were not bound, their heads hung forlornly as if already condemned.

And in front of them all, facing the conspirators and undeterred by the elements, stood two women.

The women held their heads high in the storm with unblinking eyes fixed on the conspirators. The taller appeared slightly older to Shakespeare: her hair a thick mane of dark brown with a single streak of gray. Her younger companion was shorter, skinnier, fair-haired, and possessed a piercing stare that made the conspirators too terrified to take their eyes off her.

Down on one knee and concealed behind a wall of frozen rose bushes, the bard focused his skills and spyglass on his targets' mouths as they moved.

“
Are you controlling this storm?”
Robert Catesby hollered over the wind.

“We agreed to meet againe,” the elder answered, “in Thunder, Lightning, or in Raine.”

“When the Hurley-burley's done,” the younger barked, her hair blowing. “When the Battaile's lost, and wonne.”

Robert's worried eyes wrinkled with confusion. “What hurly-burly? The fighting has not started yet.”

The women fell silent. The high hiss of their swirling fire was their response.

Believing their powers, Guy Fawkes entered into the dialogue. “We have our requests,” he called out, removing three sealed letters from his flapping cloak.

The elder woman stared at the conspirator and raised her left arm to her side.

Fawkes stepped forward to deliver the letters, but then stopped once he saw the burly men behind the women move. They disappeared behind the bonfire and returned carrying a large cauldron that had been hidden behind the flames. As the men moved around the fire, the bard noticed that their faces and arms were intricately tattooed with blue dye. The remaining men pushed their swaying, seemingly sedated three captives forward. Once the languid men were standing beside their mistresses, one of their brutes placed a curved blade in the elder's hand. The woman clenched the knife and lowered her arm, the whole time without breaking eye contact with Fawkes.