License to Quill (37 page)

Before the playwright could reply, a team of soldiers stormed into the undercroft. They were led by Sir Thomas Knyvet, Edmund Doubleday, and a third man who lurked behind them in the shadows. “In the name of King James,” Knyvet thundered, “I order you to stand aside!”

“William, what have you done?” Guy Fawkes growled as he reached for his sword and dagger. This time, the conspirator was showing Shakespeare his true face, the one that had glared down at him from the windows of the Mermaid.

“Let me handle this.” The playwright took a step forward and outstretched his arms. “Masters, my friend and I—”

Sir Thomas Knyvet thrust his sword at Shakespeare. Its bloodied blade pierced through the playwright's cape.

“Will!” Fawkes cried.

Shakespeare hobbled backward, clutching his chest. Blood was spurting through his fingers. “We are undone. Avenge us, brother!” The bard collapsed onto the woodpile, knocking over one of the barrels. Black powder spilled across the floor.

Furious, Fawkes seized his lantern and cracked it open while soldiers surrounded him with spears. “Stand back!” the traitor warned, holding his dripping candle over the powder. “I have enough gunpowder here to blow us all to Hades! Drop your weapons! Now!”

The line of lances wavered. “He lies,” a view threw from behind them.

Fawkes's eyes glowered against his firelight. “You think I'm lying? Do you!” he cried. “Here lies your doom!”

The conspirator dropped his candle. Its flame touched the powder.

Nothing happened.

Fawkes looked down in disbelief. There was no explosion. Shocked, he bent down and brushed the deadly stuff over the candle with his hands. Not only did the powder fail to combust, but the flame became extinguished.

The conspirator's fingers were black with ash. “Useless…” he cursed. “Useless!”

Suddenly, the undercroft filled with the sound of clapping.

Fawkes turned his head, the soldiers parted, and Thomas Walsingham walked into the scene. “Beautiful work, my friend. Well played. We now have no doubt about this one's intentions.”

The conspirator's eyes widened. “Who are you?”

“I wasn't talking to you,” replied the spymaster. He nodded his head toward Fawkes, and the soldiers ensnared the villain. “Take him to the Privy chamber. I will follow shortly.”

“This is a misunderstanding!” Fawkes resisted. “My name is John Johnson! I—”

One of the soldiers knocked the conspirator over the head with a wooden club. Fawkes collapsed to the floor and was carried out without further protest.

As the torches left the undercroft, Walsingham set down his lantern and puffed his pipe. “The show is over. We can go now.”

The bard exhaled as he sat up from his pyre. “Will the soldiers suspect anything?”

“Not a thing. The room is dark, and all they ever see of you is in costume at the Globe, wearing wigs and makeup.”

Shakespeare slid off the woodpile. “Thank you, W.”

“We're out of the office. You can call me Thomas.”

The playwright turned around and looked at the barrels stacked behind him. “What will become of these?”

“I'll be taking them. All the powder is in the Tower being weighed. We'll reseal it in the barrels and add them to our stores.”

“Such a shame,” the playwright sighed. “I was hoping to keep one as a theater prop.”

The spymaster smirked. “That could be arranged, if you still wish.”

Shakespeare pulled the bloodied bladder out from his doublet and tossed it to the floor. The spymaster could see that the bard was not smiling.

“Will,” Walsingham added, lowering his pipe, “I know it does not matter at this juncture, but I hope you are not conflicted over the role I asked you to play tonight.”

“Conflicted?” Shakespeare snorted as he and Walsingham walked out of the undercroft. “This man threatened me, my family, and my actors from the moment that we met. He paid me forty pieces of silver so that I could become his Judas. He called me his brother, he claimed to love me, but I know he never did. He was a snake in the grass. He always was.” The bard narrowed his eyes at the boat drifting downstream with Fawkes. “And he wore an unconvincing mask.”

Walsingham smiled. “Just out of curiosity, how do you think I would have fared if I had gone into acting?”

The playwright turned to the spymaster and snickered. “You would have made a grand Cleopatra.”

The men laughed and went their separate ways: Walsingham to the Privy chamber, and the bard to the Dark Lady's.

 

Chapter XLIII

The Ace

November 8, 1605. The Gunpowder Plot was thwarted. Parliament was not destroyed, London was in shock, and Guy Fawkes was entering his third day of torture at the hands of Sir William Waad, the Lieutenant of the Tower. After graduating from manacles to the rack, Fawkes was finally giving his interrogators what they wanted while Walsingham observed and Penny recorded—she also “embellished” whenever W requested. With his body nearly torn to pieces across a bed of wooden rollers, Fawkes surrendered his real name on day two,
*
and then the names of his coconspirators on day three.
†

As Lady Percy scratched these names down, it never dawned upon anyone in the Tower except Thomas Walsingham just how many of Guy Fawkes's fellow traitors were already dead.

*   *   *

“We are undone, and it is all their fault! The bloody heathens.”

“Will you
please
stop saying that?” Catesby pleaded. “As long as we keep our wits about us, we might still survive this!” Always the optimist, the leader of the conspirators went back to drying their dampened gunpowder.

On the rooftop of the stately Holbeche House, in Staffordshire, Marlowe listened through the chimney for a thorough summary on the past few days. All the conspirators had fled from London except for Francis Tresham—whoever that was. Catesby had learned of Fawkes's capture from Ambrose Rookwood, who crossed thirty miles in just two hours riding the same horse, an impressive feat! All plans to kidnap Princess Elizabeth were abandoned just as hastily as it sounded like it was planned, but Robert maintained hope of an armed rebellion even though it was unlikely anyone would join it. Apparently, it was just impossible for the man to say no to anything.

The conspirators raided Warwick Castle on November 6 for supplies and then Hewell Grange on November 7 for arms and powder. It had been pouring rain all day, so they settled in the Holbeche House for the evening. All their sodden gunpowder was lying around the fireplace, completely exposed and vulnerable.

Marlowe scratched his beard and then took an ace of clubs from his new deck of playing cards. He dropped the card down the chimney and slid off the rooftop.

The poet joined the posse surrounding the mansion just as all its windows exploded.

“What the bloody hell was that!” gasped Sir Richard Walsh, the sheriff of Worcester.

“Nothing really,” Marlowe answered. “I just softened them up a bit. It should make for a shorter skirmish.”

“Are you mad?” asked sharpshooter John Streete. “It's too dark out. We're not attacking them until the morning!”

Marlowe furrowed his eyebrows and looked around the midnight manor. “You honestly think it's too dark?”

“YES!” the lawmen replied.

The poet shook his head with disappointment and then turned toward the screams emanating from Holbeche House. Sir Everard Digby, the last man to join Catesby's conspirators, sprinted out of the mansion's smoking doors with his cape on fire. “I surrender!” he cried. “I surrender!” The vigilantes tossed a blanket over the burning man and took him into custody.

The sheriff and the sharpshooter turned to Marlowe in surprise. “I guess we owe you an apology. Master—”

“Factotum,” replied the poet. “Johannes Factotum.”

The lawmen stared at the cocky agent in disbelief. “That can't be your real name,” said Streete.

“It is for the next three hundred and sixty-three days. Wake me when my
kahfey
is ready.” Marlowe leaned against a tree and pulled his hat over his eyes.

A stately raven watched him while he slept.

*   *   *

Friday, November 8 did not dawn well for the conspirators at Holbeche House. In addition to being badly burned, half of them attempted to flee into the evening. All those who tried were shot and captured, among them Thomas Wintour. By eleven
A.M.,
only Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy, the bad Wright brothers, Rookwood, and John Grant remained. Since Grant had both his eyes burned out in the night's surprise explosion, only five men were fit to fight against the sheriff of Worcester's force of two hundred men.

“We mean to die here!” Catesby shouted through the manor's shattered windows. Holbeche House was filled with gun smoke and riddled with bullets. There were explosions and shouting everywhere. Amidst the fighting, Ambrose Rookwood was taken down by a musket ball while the treacherous Wright brothers were reduced to one. As Rookwood writhed on the floor and the blinded John Grant listened helplessly, Catesby, Percy, and Jack Wright became the only fighters left to kill.

Then, suddenly, at high noon, the shooting stopped.

Catesby looked out his broken window to find a lone figure moving through the mists. “Halt or I'll shoot!” cried the leader of the conspiracy.

“I know you're out of musket powder,” replied the man who blew it up with a playing card.

“What's going on here!” Thomas Percy coughed as he crouched behind the window, his face covered with blood and sweat. “Is this a trick?”

“Who are you!” Jack Wright thundered.

After looking over his shoulder for privacy, the man replied, “My name is Christopher Marlowe, and I'm the man who's going to kill you.”

Robert Catesby's blackened face scowled. “You call this negotiating!” he shouted.

“I'm sorry! It's nonnegotiable!”

Catesby gasped and threw his arms around Thomas Percy. “It's going to be all right!” the leader muttered.

The sweaty man was done taking orders from the optimist. “Enough of this. Jack! Go out and flay that fop!”

“With pleasure.” Jack stomped out of the mansion and unsheathed his steel, shouting: “Ho there!”

Marlowe stopped walking while his raven circled overhead. “Who are you supposed to be?” the poet asked.

“My name is Jack Wright, and I'm the best swordsman in England!” he shouted, raising his blade.

The poet raised his eyebrows. “You're the best swordsman in England?”

“Aye!”

Marlowe raised his rapier and shot the swordsman dead with his hidden trigger.

“No!”

“Jack!” Robert and Percy cried from their window.

Seeing them, the poet aimed his sword in their direction and pulled his trigger one more time.

Both men were killed by the same bullet.

With his work completed, Marlowe turned around and passed through his misty curtains.

“What happened?” asked the sheriff.

A raven swooped down and perched on the Double-O agent's shoulder. “The show is over.”

 

Act V

1606

 

Chapter XLIV

The Sacrifice

Robert Catesby and Thomas Percy were the first to lose their heads for their conspiracy. After falling from a single bullet, their bodies were exhumed and their heads displayed on spikes outside the House of Lords. Francis Tresham died of strangury, a painful urinary inflammation, on December 23 while still a prisoner at the Tower of London.

The remaining men were tortured, tried, found guilty of high treason, and then put to the traitor's death: being hanged, drawn, and quartered before a cheering London crowd.

Robert Wintour, Thomas Bates, Everard Digby, and John Grant went out on a cold and cloudy January 30, 1606. They were dragged through the filthy streets of London on wooden beds from the Tower to St. Paul's churchyard, more than a mile away. The conspirators were forced onto scaffolds one by one, stripped, hanged, cut down while still alive, castrated, disemboweled, and then cut into quarters amongst a symphony of jeers and laughter. High above them, Christopher Marlowe watched from atop St. Paul's Cathedral with a telescope Sir Francis Bacon had asked him to test.

Although such spectacles were fodder for countless writers throughout history, William Shakespeare was not present.

The next day, however, was a different story.

Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, and Thomas Wintour were drawn and quartered at Westminster's Old Palace Yard on January 31. It was an equally dreary day: no storm clouds, but no sunlight either. Once the three traitors were torn to pieces, one last man was forced onto the scaffold: a sleepless, battered, bruised, and waterboarded “Guido” Fawkes.

The conspirator had a noose thrown around his neck in full view of the building he had tried and failed to destroy with gunpowder. Although barely able to breathe or stand after months of torture, his vision sharpened with adrenaline. From his visage, he could see the heads of Robert Catesby and Thomas Percy: a feast for crows who had grown accustomed to their faces. The conspirator let his eyes fall and resigned himself to the fate he would soon be sharing with Catesby, Percy, and the three men whose entrails were still strewn across the stage. His gaze lifted from the blood and organs to the crowd assaulting him; the people whom Fawkes believed would have heralded him as a hero had it not been for some treason within his ranks.

There were rumors that Francis Tresham had tipped the government to the conspiracy with an anonymous letter,
*
but Fawkes knew it was a forgery. When it had been shown to him, the letter was still wet with ink. It was a ruse no different than when Walsingham swapped the barrels in the undercroft.