‘I must tell you, John,’ Cecil continued, ‘that this perspective glass has assumed great significance. I do believe the very fate of the realm might rest on our strange instrument. We have culverins, we have ships-of-war, we have courage, yet this glass is our greatest weapon of all – for we alone have it. As the sparrowhawk’s eye provides its killing vantage, so it is for us.’
Shakespeare considered what he knew of the perspective glass. It was made of stiffened pig-hide and it concealed curved pieces of glass, like those used in spectacles to remedy feeble sight. These glass discs were precisely ground, highly polished and so conformed that, when a man looked in one end of the tube, the impossible happened – distant objects drew near.
As chief officer in Cecil’s intelligence network, he was one of a mere half-dozen men privileged to have used it. It had been at Greenwich for a demonstration in front of the Queen. When Shakespeare looked through it, he had clearly seen the markings of a deer a mile away and the freckles of a maiden hanging out her mother’s washing. Astonished, he had gazed through it for a full minute and then handed it back to Cecil suddenly, as though the glass contained some magic that might burn his hand or eye.
That had been a year ago. The next Shakespeare had heard of it was last month. Cecil had ordered him to assign Boltfoot Cooper to protect the glass’s keeper, William Ivory. Word had reached England from a spy in the court of King Philip that Spain had become aware of the glass’s existence – and wanted it.
‘We will keep Ivory and the glass safe.’
‘Good. Your man Boltfoot did well. But I must now tell you why I am so concerned that we will need the glass again very soon.’ He signalled to a liveried servant, who had been dogging their steps at a discreet distance. The man approached and bowed. ‘Give Mr Shakespeare the paper.’
The servant proffered a document. Shakespeare took it and instantly recognised his associate Frank Mills’s hand. It was a decoded intercept. He read it quickly and began to go cold. His eyes met Cecil’s.
Boltfoot lost Ivory in the busy street of Shoreditch. One moment, they were riding at a slow walk, a little way apart, the next he was gone into the throng of people, livestock and wagons.
‘A plague of God,’ Boltfoot rasped beneath his breath. He was furious with himself. Progress had been slow. It had taken them over three days to get home to Dowgate from Portsmouth. And now, just an hour out on the way to join Jane and the family in the safety of Suffolk, he had let his guard drop. Standing up in his stirrups, he tried to look above the heads of the mob.
Boltfoot’s hand went to the hilt of his cutlass. He wished very much to do some injury to Ivory. Well, he would just have to find him; even among this teeming mass of humanity and animals, there was only a limited number of places he could be. He kicked on into the crowd.
Shakespeare read the message again. It was from a French intelligencer in Brittany to his masters at the royal court of Henri IV, and it revealed that the Spanish army of Don Juan del Águila was building a fort on the southern headlands that dominated the entrance to Brest Harbour.
‘The fort is almost complete, John, and will be powerfully equipped with long-range cannon and at least four companies of men. The Spanish will control the entrance to Brest Harbour – and will hold the port in thrall. If Brest is taken, with its deep-water harbour, they will be able to assemble a far more deadly armada against us than was attempted in ’88. And they will have liberty to pick their time, when the wind and weather are in their favour. Hawkins tells me the great danger is that the harbour is to windward of Plymouth, so their ships could use the prevailing winds to make a sudden attack. I do not know how we could withstand such a force. Our coffers are empty, our fleet is in disarray, our land is overrun with verminous bands of rogues and vagabonds. These are straitened times. Dangerous times.’
‘What can be done?’
‘What indeed? Sir Roger Williams has been sent secretly to survey the fort to see whether it can be taken. But the omens are not good. The forces we have in Brittany are woefully lacking after four years of skirmishing. General Sir John Norreys is down to his last thousand men, of which half are non-effective through sickness or wounds. They are holed up in the fishing port of Paimpol. Only now does Her Majesty see the importance of this forgotten war. She is summoning Norreys home to confer.’
‘What will you recommend, Sir Robert?’
‘That he must be reinforced. With seasoned men, new recruits, a siege train and a fleet. I have already sent out an order to the lords lieutenant to recruit men throughout southern England. And we will move a number of battle-hardened troops from the Low Countries. But it may all be too little, for we will be up against a well-equipped Spanish army and a constant patrol of galleons. Brittany is in turmoil, with French troops on both sides. Marshal Aumont’s army supports the English, but Mercoeur’s Catholic League militias are with the Spanish. In such circumstances of disarray, we need every advantage we can muster.’
‘The perspective glass.’
‘As Erasmus told us, in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king. So in the world of dull-eyed pigeons, the hawk’s-eye kills.’
Shakespeare bowed. Ivory would be protected until he was needed. It would not be easy. He was prickly and churlish and would not take kindly to being nursemaided by Cooper. Reports suggested he lived a solitary life, communing with his fellow man only when he wanted a game of cards or a whore to satisfy his carnal desires. No one would ever have noted him except for his one great talent: his eyesight. Vision so precise that his crewmates called him simply Eye, or Mr Eye. Even before the perspective glass, Drake had used his skills to good effect on the great circumnavigation of the globe. The glass had given him almost godlike powers to observe the land and sea.
One thing puzzled Shakespeare.
‘Sir Robert, could we not make more perspective glasses now that we have the secret? Surely the mechanism can be copied? There could be one on every ship-of-war and in every coastal fortress.’
Cecil shook his head impatiently. ‘No. It is out of the question. The Queen won’t have it, nor will the Privy Council and neither will I. Protecting one glass is hard enough. How would we keep safe a dozen or more? How long would it be before one of them fell into Spanish hands – and then where would our advantage be?’ He stopped in the shade of a new-leafed horse-chestnut tree. ‘You realise, of course, John, that the incident in Portsmouth was but the beginning. There will be other attempts.’
‘Indeed.’
‘But protecting Mr Eye is not sufficient. There are two other men who must also be safeguarded – the men who constructed the perspective glass. If the Spanish cannot get to the glass itself, they may seek to abduct one or both of the men who made it and learn their secrets.’
‘Dee and Digges …’ Shakespeare muttered.
The two most learned sciencers in England were Dr John Dee, alchemist, spiritual seeker, stargazer and ingenious deviser of machines, and Thomas Digges, mathematician, military theorist, architect of forts and professor of navigation. Digges had been Dee’s student. Some men said he had now surpassed his master in the sciences.
Dee and Digges, both remarkable but very different. In 1580, fourteen years ago, Lord Burghley – Cecil’s father and Lord Treasurer of England – had commissioned the two men to devise a perspective glass. They had assured Burghley that, with the best glass crafters and with time, the device was possible. There were difficulties, however, mainly in calculating the exact conformation of the glasses and in grinding and polishing them with the required precision. Dee had given up the struggle, leaving the country for Prague. Only after his return, and with the onset of open warfare with Spain, did he and Digges begin to overcome their difficulties. The invasion attempt by the Armada accelerated their efforts, which at last came good.