“People can make mistakes,” Shakespeare suggested.
“Of course. And that is what we must find out,” Essex said. “Now, Mr. Segar, tell Mr. Shakespeare where your housemaid saw this woman.”
“She was outside the theatre in Southwark, dressed as a strumpet touting for business. It was certainly in the area where the whores gather. Agnes told me she was so taken aback to see Eleanor, knowing her of old and knowing her to be lost in the New World, that for a moment she merely stood there open-mouthed in astonishment. By the time she had gathered her wits to approach her, the woman had joined arms with a man and they had gone, vanished into the theatre crowd. That was the last she saw of her.”
“What time of day was this?” Shakespeare asked.
“Mid-afternoon, I believe. You would do best to ask her such details yourself.”
It was the sort of question Shakespeare would have asked in his days as an intelligencer, to determine how much daylight there was and how clearly this Agnes Hardy might have seen this woman she took to be Eleanor Dare. But what had any of this to do with him now? McGunn read his thoughts.
“So, Mr. Shakespeare, why have we brought you here? That’s what you want to know.”
“Well, of course any man would be curious about this strange tale-but it really has nothing to do with me.”
Essex clapped his hands. “But you are just the man for the job, Mr. Shakespeare. The perfect intelligencer, a man used to digging in the most putrid of middens to find bright red rubies of betrayal. Everything I know of you suggests to me that you are the man to find this woman.”
Shakespeare set his face very determinedly. “Oh, no…”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Shakespeare. A thousand times yes. And you will be paid well for your troubles. I am sure that a handsome sum of gold would help your school, would it not?”
Indeed, who did not need gold in these straitened times? “But why , my lord of Essex, are you so concerned about the supposed sighting of this woman, especially when she is most unlikely to be the person identified?”
Essex looked at Shakespeare as if he had lost his wit. He sighed with great exaggeration and turned to McGunn. “You talk to him, Mr. McGunn. Answer all Mr. Shakespeare’s questions. Knock sense into him. I have other matters to attend to. Come, Mr. Segar.”
Without another word, he strode with proud yet ungainly gait toward the entrance door, Segar following in his wake. And then they were gone.
Chapter 4
It seemed to Shakespeare that he had been assailed by a whirlwind. He looked at McGunn and saw something unpleasant in his eyes.
“Well, there we have it, Shakespeare,” McGunn said with weary resignation. “God has spoken and so we mere mortals must obey.”
Shakespeare held up the palm of his hand. “I really don’t think you and my lord of Essex quite understand-”
“Oh, we understand, all right. We understand, too, that you are in sore need of funds-funds which we can provide in exchange for a small service that may take you no more than a few days. An old colleague of yours informs me that you are the perfect man for the task.”
“An old colleague?”
“You will meet him soon enough.”
Again Shakespeare demurred. “Mr. McGunn, I still feel as if there is something I am missing here.”
“Well, let me say just two words to you: Walter Ralegh. Now do you understand my lord of Essex’s interest in the matter?”
Shakespeare knew, of course, that the Roanoke colony had been Ralegh’s child. That it was he who had won patents from the Queen granting him permission to sponsor the colony and had raised the necessary gold for ships, crews, supplies, and settlers to make it work. It had been a critical investment for the great courtier, for he had persuaded the Queen that the colony-and his plan to found a great town in Virginia grandly called the City of Ralegh-would bring untold riches to her coffers. But what had all this to do with Essex?
“The point is, Shakespeare…” McGunn said slowly, as if spelling out the obvious to a small boy. “The point is that my lord of Essex and Sir Walter Ralegh are not easy companions. In truth-and I do not care if you repeat this-they would happily plunge red-hot pokers up each other’s arses if in so doing they could cause the other pain and further their own influence at court. For you must know that they see each other as chief rival for the Queen’s favor.”
“But that does not explain why it is so important to find this Eleanor Dare.”
McGunn ran a leathery hand over his sweat-dripping bare forehead. He pulled at his gold hoop earring, all the while staring at Shakespeare with an expression on his fleshy, canine face that hovered somewhere between condescension and intimidation. “Because Ralegh is already in bad odor,” he said quietly. “He has impregnated and married the Queen’s lady-in-waiting Bess Throckmorton, and Elizabeth is in a towering rage. She has had them arrested and held under close arrest. Ralegh is on the ground; he will not raise himself up with poetry this time. Only treasure will buy his way back into the Queen’s heart. Treasure from Roanoke. That is why we must find Eleanor Dare-for she alone knows what happened. Is the colony still alive? Does it thrive? Can Ralegh expect a fleet of gold? Or have all perished-and with them his hope of redemption? Do you understand now, Shakespeare? My lord of Essex does not want Ralegh ever to get off the ground again.”
Shakespeare acknowledged the logic. Ralegh’s fate depended on Roanoke. With the colony not proven dead, he had hope still. With the colony gone, he had none. This was court politics. No one cared about the missing men, women, and children. This was about power and position. Shakespeare understood it all now, and saw too that there was danger here, extreme danger.
To get caught up in an affair such as this between two of the most powerful men in the land was like finding yourself trapped in a burning attic; do you die by burning or by jumping? This was a deadly game between Essex and Ralegh. Leave them to it. “I am sorry, Mr. McGunn,” he said. “This task you ask of me is out of the question. Please apologize to my lord of Essex on my behalf, but I cannot possibly accept his kind offer.”
There was no longer any ambiguity in McGunn’s face. His lips curled back and his yellow teeth moved against each other so that Shakespeare could hear an unholy grinding noise, as if they would crack like glass against each other. “Did I mention the twenty sovereigns?” McGunn said as if it were the last offer before a knife under the rib cage.
“Twenty sovereigns, two hundred sovereigns. I cannot be swayed, Mr. McGunn. The task is not for me.”
McGunn’s hand flashed out like a serpent’s jaws and clasped Shakespeare by the throat. With just the one hand, he lifted him clear off the floor. Shakespeare’s hands went to his throat to try to dislodge the enormous hand that was choking him, but without effect. McGunn’s hand was rigid and of immense, unmovable strength. He looked up into his eyes and mouthed words that Shakespeare could not hear as blood rushed to his brain. Of a sudden, McGunn dropped him and he fell in a heap to the wooden floorboards. Shakespeare gasped for breath; his hands rubbed his throat. He knew now what a hanged man felt in the moments before death took him.
“You don’t understand, do you, Shakespeare,” McGunn said, his soft Irish brogue dripping malevolence. “No one-and I mean no one-turns down my lord of Essex. And more than that-no one turns me down, either. In death’s name, this isn’t an offer we’re making you. It’s an order.”
McGunn relaxed and smiled his easy smile once again. He patted Shakespeare on the back. “There we go. No hard feelings, Mr. Shakespeare. We’re all men of the world. And I am certain we shall work very well together and share a drink or two in the tavern when our toil is done.”