‘It is a hideous story, Don Antonio. But what has this to do with Mary, Queen of Scots and the secret of her son by Bothwell?’
Perez, exhausted by the telling of his story, had opened the lid to his box and was sifting through the glass vials. At last he plucked one out, removed its little cork stopper and tipped the contents down his throat. He closed his eyes and reclined on the bench, the hazy sun full on his pallid, mottled face.
‘Don Antonio?’
‘I do not know what you are saying, Mr Shakespeare. There, you have the great secret. My life is worth nothing now. Philip has tried to kill me these many years for fear that I would disclose it. Now, he will divert every assassin in his armoury towards me.’
‘Don Antonio, we were led to believe you had information of the son born to Mary of Scots in the castle of Lochleven.’
Perez breathed deeply, luxuriating in the warmth of the opium spirit as it spread through his body. ‘You are talking in riddles, Mr Shakespeare… What we need is a coalition against this murderous Philip and his empire of death. We must bring in the Dutch, the French, the Portingales and the Mussalmans of Turkey…’
‘You sent a message to Sir Robert Cecil that you had a secret to sell, one pertaining to the royal succession. The tale of Montigny has no bearing on the English Crown. How could it?’
‘I said I had a great secret to sell. I said nothing of succession.’
Shakespeare looked at him hard. A cloud passed across the face of the sun. No. Of course he had said no such thing, for it was not Perez who had given the message to Cecil that there was a secret for sale. That task would have been given to his secretary, who would most certainly have listened to Ana Cabral. Perez was nothing to do with any of this. He was a bystander, a convenience. This was all about Ana Cabral and the old nun. Perez could propose his grand schemes for the overthrow of Philip, yet all the while his mistress was busy with the real plot. Perez had been no more than a ticket of passage to England. Without knowing it, every action he took was abetting the very regime he wished to destroy. Shakespeare stood up. He could not wait here a moment longer.
‘I remember such a tale, Mr Shakespeare,’ Perez said languidly, eyes now closed. ‘In the late sixties, it was whispered in court circles that a child had been brought from Scotland to Spain, but I paid such tittle-tattle no heed…’
Shakespeare was not listening. He had already bowed curtly to Don Antonio and was now running through the garden towards the water-stairs. He needed to bring in the Cabral woman without delay.
Chapter 28
The oarsman brought the tilt-boat smoothly alongside the little pier beside Essex’s private water-stairs. ‘Greenwich,’ Shakespeare said brusquely. The boat rocked and the water lapped at its bows as he settled into the seat at the back. ‘Why are there not two of you? I’m in a hurry.’
‘My copesmate ails, master. The bloody flux. But the tide is with us…’
‘Put muscle into it and you shall have an extra groat.’
Boltfoot felt that death must come soon and that it would be a kindness. He could scarce struggle for breath now. The pain in his back and neck and bound arms had turned into an agonising numbness, where feeling seemed to be slipping into everlasting non-feeling.
What little fetid air he could snatch through the metal pipe went to his lungs in short rasps. He could not have screamed even if he wished to. Was he conscious any more? He was not certain. He no longer wondered what was happening. His only thought was Jane and little John, his baby son. They were what kept him alive, they were his only reason to survive.
Occasionally, he opened his eyes. A tiny spot of light came through the tube, but all it offered was a charcoal dimness instead of utter black. He had no way of knowing how many hours he had been here, but thought it must still be daylight outside.
There was a noise above him. A scraping sound. He gasped at the stale air. The tube was pulled out from above and a spray of dry earth fell through the hole into the coffin. It dusted down across his face, spreading into his eyes, up his nostrils and into his mouth. He tried to spit it out, but more came in, so he closed his lips. Now he could not breathe at all. The gritty earth was at the back of his throat. He began to retch uncontrollably and his chest heaved.
From above, the scraping continued. He vaguely realised that someone was clearing the earth from the coffin. It seemed they were digging him up, but his life hung like the last ember buried in the ashes of a fire that has been left untended overnight.
Suddenly the lid of the coffin was levered off. Boltfoot spat and coughed out as much soil as he could. He tried to open his eyes, but they were thick with dust and the brilliance of the light was unbearable. He felt his body being lifted by a number of hands.
‘He has risen from the dead.’
The voice was Scottish, high-pitched and coarse.
‘Why, I do declare it a miracle.’
Without ceremony, he was flung to the ground. He blinked open his eyes. He could see now that he was close to a fragrant fire of sticks and branches. With an effort, he turned to one side and saw the three black-robed men. They were standing in a semicircle, looking down at him with curiosity, as if wondering what to do next with their prize.
Then he noticed something else about them, something he had not been able to discern before his entombment. Only one of these three Scots was a man. The other two were young, fair-haired women with brutish faces. From the similarity of their faces and masculine build, he took them to be sisters and thought them barely out of their teen years.
‘Do we have a little potion to revive him, sister Agnes?’
‘I think we do, sister Gellie.’
‘Look at him. Do you not think him wide-eyed beneath the soot and soil? Maybe he is surprised to be alive…’
‘And to be welcomed by two such lovely sisters and their fine brother, with the cooper’s image all prepared in wax with his hair.’
‘Give him the remedy, sister Agnes. Is it mixed well? Give it to him and let him wonder at our craft as we cut him and pass him over the fire nine times. Let us call on Dog to help us in this and we shall kiss his red buttocks and stroke his red tail. Then we shall see how this cooper do sweat and whether he waste away and melt as his wax image do…’
The waterman struck just beyond the bridge. They were in mid-stream. The river was crowded with many different boats and sailing vessels. A barge pulled by a boat with a dozen strong oarsmen had just passed, creating a heavy swell in its wake. The tilt-boat rocked madly. The waterman stumbled back beneath the canopy, as if trying to regain his balance.
Shakespeare held out his arms to steady him, but found himself instead being dragged forward and, in one deft movement, flung over the side into the grey, swelling depths of the river.
He sank into the dark water, frantically kicking and pulling with his arms to find the surface. But he was disoriented, dragged by the tide and his encumbrances — sword, pistols, boots, clothes. He could not discern whether he was going down or up. Suddenly, he broke surface and gulped in air. The first thing he saw was the blade of the oar descending towards his head. He tried to duck back beneath the surface, but he was not fast enough. The hard, heavy wood hit the crown of his head like a hammer.
The blow knocked him sideways through the water. He floundered, flailing with his arms, but did not lose consciousness. The oar was coming at him again. This time he dived down before it hit. He tried to swim away from the boat, fighting against the current. The water was murky, and he could not see. At last, he came up again. He was no more than four yards from the boat. The oarsman had a pistol. He was pressing a single, heavy ball, wrapped in cartridge paper, into its muzzle. Shakespeare dived again, but this time he headed back towards the boat. Its shape loomed above him, narrow and dark against the surface light.