License to Quill (39 page)

Shakespeare sneaked a peek from backstage. The audience was enthralled.

LENOX

And that well might

Aduise him to a Caution, t'hold what distance

His wisedome can prouide. Some holy Angell

Flye to the Court of England, and vnfold

His Message ere he come, that a swift blessing

May soone returne to this our suffering Country, Vnder a hand accurs'd.

LORD

Ile send my Prayers with him.

The players exited, the music resumed, and the Globe's enthusiastic audience applauded.

Act III of
The Tragedy of Macbeth
was over.

Actors John Heminges and Alexander Cooke hurried into the Tiring House, where William Shakespeare and the King's Men were readying act IV. The first scene promised to be a busy one: Richard Burbage's Macbeth would be reunited with the three witches from act I. Paintings and fiery torches were being readied and ghostly apparitions would descend from the heavens on ropes. Also, perhaps most important of all, a large black barrel along with a bucket of disgusting props would serve as the witches' cauldron and ingredients.

After an interlude, the music stopped. It was time for act IV to begin.

“Is everyone ready?”

“Yes, Master Shakespeare.”

“Very well. Thunder?”

There was no sound from young James Sands, who was holding a frying pan and a mallet.

“I say, ‘thunder'?”

Still no response.

“Young Sands?”

The boy was staring out of the left stage door window with a look of profound confusion.

“Hit the pan, boy!” William Sly stomped over and took the boy's mallet, but paused once he saw what was going on outside. “What the devil?”

“What is it?”

“Master Shakespeare,” Sly muttered, “something strange is brewing in the Pit.”

The bard looked out the windows beside the Discovery Space. Three dark figures in hooded cloaks were standing in the crowd. The Globe's groundlings backed away from them, thinking this strange display was part of the play.

“What's going on out there?” asked John Heminges.

The bard's eyes widened. The three figures were standing around a large black vessel.

“Is that Yorick?” asked Richard Burbage, referring to the skull one of them lowered into the cauldron.

Shakespeare grabbed a lantern and rushed out of the Discovery Room. “Ho there!” he hollered, storming across the stage. “What are you—”

The three women glared at the playwright from under their hoods.

Bewildered, the bard raised his lantern, and then he backed away in horror.

The women were wearing the tanned, leathered faces of Thomas Percy, Robert Catesby, and Guy Fawkes as masks. All three of the conspirators' skulls were in the cauldron, freshly stripped of their flesh, which, as mentioned, London's raven population had grown accustomed to.

“What are you doing!” Shakespeare gasped.

The cunning folk produced crucibles from their cloaks. “A deed without a name!” replied the elder.

The women emptied their vessels into the cauldron.

The Globe exploded with ash and fire.

 

Chapter XLVIII

Bonfire Night

For the first night in history, every square in London was burning Guy Fawkes in effigy atop massive pyres. It was a spectacle men like Thomas Walsingham encouraged and that Parliament passed into law. The Gunpowder Plot had been thwarted, and the people wanted to celebrate its failure with fire.

To the cunning folk, every bonfire in London was just a spark.

“Did you see that?” asked one of the watchers of the Wall, as did countless people throughout the city.

Tens of thousands of Londoners turned their heads to Southwark, where a string of fireworks shot into the sky from the Globe Theatre. The dazzled spectators cheered and applauded, completely oblivious to their impending doom.

Seeing their signal, the cunning warriors hidden throughout the city threw their innocent-looking logs into the bonfires. As in the Arden, the logs erupted with a foul smoke, a miasma that lingered overhead like a storm cloud. Revelers turned around and began to back away from the noxious vapor as it swelled into a smog stretching from the Ludgate to the Tower. Those closest to the fires began to cough and collapse. Those farther back screamed and ran away in panic. As fireworks continued to explode above Southwark like thunder, anarchy and terror swept over the city's terrified inhabitants.

“What sorcery is this?” a watchman asked.

“Sergeant, look!”

The watchers atop Cripplegate turned their backs on the screaming city to witness an even more shocking spectacle. The windmills of Hampstead had drifted in from the horizon and were slowly advancing on London Wall. An entire army of painted warriors was following behind them.

The watchmen drew his broadswords. “Prepare for battle!”

“Archers!”
screamed an officer.

Columns of English longbowmen raced onto the Wall.

“Archers! Ignite!”

Archers lit their arrows with torches as the windmills crawled closer.

“Archers! Draw!”

The defenders of London Wall raised and aimed their longbows.

“Arch—”

Before the final order could be given, a cunning warrior hidden among the guards loosed his arrow into the ring of powder dusted from one end of London Wall to the other. It was the same substance the witches had used for their ceremony in the Arden; a deadly mixture that would take the rest of the world two centuries to discover.
*
However, instead of enough powder to fill a crucible, this was enough to fill a thousand cauldrons. The powder ignited, and a burning wave of glowing, twisting arms shot out of the ground as if Hell itself had just erupted. The watchmen coughed and choked on the deadly fumes as the branches grew as tall as trees, surrounding London in a wreath of fire no one in or around the city could overcome.

Except through the water.

Boats, countless boats began to drift in through the Thames, but not to rescue London's terrified inhabitants. The boats landed on both banks of the river, north and south, unleashing wave after wave of rats upon the helpless city.

Terror ruled every point of the compass within London Wall.

*   *   *

“Master W! The city is under attack!”

The spymaster looked up from his desk work. “Who is it?”

“I don't know!” Penny gasped. “Some sort of sorcery! A great cloud has fallen over the city!”

Walsingham's pipe fell out of his mouth. “Secure the mansion, Lady Percy. I'm going to the Tower.”

“Master, shouldn't you—”

There was a crash in Penny's office as cunning warriors threw themselves through her windows.

*   *   *

“We cannot stay here!”

“Abandon the Wall! Abandon the Wall!”

The city's greatest defenders were collapsing on every front.

Conventional weapons were useless against the cunning folk's sorcery. Arrows passed harmlessly through the vines ensnaring London like burning serpents. There were a few watchmen who successfully doused water over the cunning weapon, but those who did suffocated in the deadly gas their heroism summoned. Unable to fight and barely able to breathe, London's watchmen had no choice but to abandon the Wall and rally behind the city's seven gates. The gates were as high as five stories and had never fallen in battle. For 1,400 years, these defenses safeguarded London from her enemies.

The city's watchmen rallied, took defensive formations, drew their weapons, and were ready.

However, the cunning warriors had no interest in attacking London's gates. The windmills approaching the city were actually siege towers being towed by teams of oxen inside them. Once the engines passed through the city's fiery wreath, their sails ignited, driving away any defenders that still stood against them.

The machines reached the Wall and dropped their bridges, unleashing wave after wave of naked, painted, screaming warriors upon the city.

*   *   *

“Marlowe! What are you doing?”

“What do you think I'm doing? I'm going out there!” The Double-O agent sat atop his Turcoman stallion in the Tower stables, prepared to ride into battle.

“No, you're not!” shouted Sir Francis Bacon. “Squire, bring out the Leonardo chariot!”

Marlowe lowered his rapier. “The what?”

The Tower squire ran up to the warrior poet. “Follow me, master.”

*   *   *

“What is this madness?”

“I'm afraid I do not know, Your Majesty.” Bianca hurried with Anne of Denmark through the White Tower.

Although the Gunpowder Plot had been foiled, Thomas Walsingham and England's Secretary of State Robert Cecil agreed that the Palace at Westminster was too dangerous for King James on the plot's anniversary. The risk of someone duplicating the attack through some other means was too great, especially since Princess Elizabeth had been targeted for kidnapping and James's own father had been murdered in a gunpowder blast many years before. As a result, for their own safety, the entire royal family was at Tower of London this evening—just as the cunning folk expected they would be.

The Dark Lady, however, was a factor that their wisest women had not anticipated.

“This way, Your Majesty.” Bianca directed Anne and her children to the safest holdings in the keep. Once they were out of her way, the Dark Lady hurried up the spiral stairs of the White Tower to the castle's rooftop.

There was shouting and screaming everywhere in London. All of Bacon's ravens were flying in panic above the city they could not dive down to defend. The Tower's Ravenmaster and all its rooftop soldiers were dead. The thick clouds rising up from the bonfires remained a deadly weapon against the birds, as they did to Bianca once the fumes attacked her lungs. The Dark Lady coughed violently and uncontrollably as she surveyed the nightmare Bonfire Night had become.

The entire city was rimmed with living fire. Fireworks continued to flash like lightning over Southwark. A fireship packed with explosives detonated against London Bridge preventing any passage across the Thames. A column of cunning warriors breeched the Wall and were now charging through the city. The once celebratory population was now running for their lives, surrounded by painted men, plague rats, and a deadly fog looming over London. Bianca held a handkerchief to her mouth as she studied the cloud from above and the location of the bonfires, which glowed like candles through the smog.

Realizing at once what had to be done, the Dark Lady raced down the Tower's steps, coughing up blood the entire way.

 

Chapter XLIX

The Turning Point

“Get everybody out of here!” Shakespeare shouted as the cauldron bubbled over with flailing limbs. Terror gripped the Globe as
The Tragedy of Macbeth
spilled into reality. The actors ran offstage with sand buckets to control the fire, but while they saved their theater, nothing could stop the barrage of fireworks shooting into the sky.

Eventually, the theater quieted as the greater horror spread to the rest of London. “Is everyone still alive?” the playwright asked.

The King's Men were tending to some of the injured spectators, and to their own.

“Aye!”

“Nothing serious.”

“Just some bruises and burns over here.”

“All is well.”

Finally, the fireworks shooting out of the cauldron stopped. Its fiery arms froze and turned into ash.

“God save us,” Shakespeare sighed. “Men, keep that cauldron under control. But keep your distance! It emits a deadly fume. I must go to the Tower.”

“The Tower?” gasped the actors.

“Yes! Lawrence, fetch me the day's receipts, my sword, and my pocket watch.”

“Aye, master.”

“Master Shakespeare…” began John Heminges, “just what is going on here?”

“Aye! Why do you have to go to the Tower?” asked Alexander Cooke, who was being bandaged by young James Sands.

Torn between his loyalties, the bard looked to Richard Burbage. The experienced actor nodded, acknowledging that it was time for Shakespeare to tell with the rest of the King's Men the truth. “I would never lie to you, my brothers. I have been working for the government from the moment I agreed to write this play. The cunning folk are behind this strange attack. They are Celtic witches. Sorceresses. They want every one of us dead! I do not know how much help I can be, but as long as things are safe here, my place belongs at the Tower.”

The King's Men looked at one another, many of them still in their costumes. Was Shakespeare abandoning them, or were they abandoning their greatest member?

Richard Burbage settled the matter by drawing his Scottish claymore—an anachronism, but a welcome one—as he declared: “Master Shakespeare, we would think ourselves accursed and hold our manhoods cheap”—Richard raised his sword—“if we did not fight with you! On Guy Fawkes Night!”

“HURRAH!” the actors cheered, lifting their weapons as the bard joined in as well.

“Here are your things,” entered Fletcher, handing Shakespeare everything he had requested.

The bard unsheathed his sword, shouted “HURRAH!” once more, and then led the King's Men screaming out of the theater.

They were immediately stopped by a blood-covered bear terrorizing their patrons on Maiden Lane.

“God save us,” William Sly groaned.

“Master Shakespeare,” reentered Fletcher. “You forgot these.”

The bard turned his eyes to the bag of coins and the pocket watch Sir Francis Bacon had begrudgingly replaced. “Stand back, men!” Shakespeare shouted after picking up the latter.

The bear locked eyes with the playwright, and the bard pulled the pin from his deadly timepiece.