Shakespeare shook the reins. He would lose the rest of the day if he stopped now – a day that he could not afford. Reluctantly, he rode on, resolving instead to stop the night here on his return journey with Dr Dee.
For the next forty hours, save a five-hour sleep at an inn, he drove northwards relentlessly, urging on post-horse after post-horse, exchanging them for fresh animals as soon as they flagged.
Two hundred miles later, John Shakespeare was deep into Lancashire. It had been a rough slog, leaving him saddle-sore, angry and exhausted. He had made good progress, but the thought that he had not taken the opportunity to visit Andrew nagged at him all the way. What worried him most – something he barely dared admit to himself – was that Andrew might leave the country.
Too many Catholic youths fled England for the seminaries of Rheims and Rome and Valladolid; some of them sought freedom of worship, some trained to return to England as priests. Under the law of the land, it was treason for a Catholic priest to enter England secretly, and the punishment was death, martyrdom.
Andrew’s college, St John’s, was reckoned hard Protestant now, but nothing was ever that simple. There were still disturbances in the college, still Fellows whose hearts lay with the old ways. Shakespeare had a deep sense of foreboding.
As he rode on, he thought about the rest of his family. With Andrew gone, their large house in Dowgate, on the banks of the Thames in the city of London, seemed empty. It had been a school for the poor boys of London, dedicated to Andrew’s mother, Margaret Woode, but it had been closed by two years of plague and showed little sign of reopening. It was a pleasantly appointed property in a fine setting, but Shakespeare found its echoing spaces unsettling and oppressive. He turned corners expecting to see Catherine, his wife, but she was not there.
These thoughts crowded in as he came down Parbold Hill from the sensuous folds of southern Lancashire towards the flatlands that led to the sea. He was within the last few miles of the market town of Ormskirk and of Lathom House.
From the hill, the land stretched out before him. Then he came once more into woods where the road narrowed and became more rutted.
Suddenly a gunshot rent the air. Shakespeare reined in the tough, flea-bitten post-horse. They were on a beaten track through a wood of oak and ash. Light played through the fresh spring leaves. He waited a moment, then walked the horse on, more cautiously. It was probably a huntsman with a fowling piece, but it paid to be wary along these outlaw-infested paths. Every lane of England seemed inhabited by criminal bands of vagabonds in these straitened times.
Turning a corner, he pulled his mount to a halt again. Revulsion welled up within him. There were three men at the side of the road, one of them with a hempen noose about his neck, his arms bound behind his back. The other two men were dressed in heavy cassock coats of the type worn by soldiers. They were powerful-looking and heavily armed. The smaller of the two had a smoking petronel pistol dangling from his hand and was picking up a dead rabbit. Neither man seemed concerned at the arrival of Shakespeare. They eyed him coldly, then continued about their business. One of them, the taller, a plough-horse of a man at six and a half feet with a muscled frame and a gaunt face that seemed to tell of battles fought and survived, held the loose end of the long hemp rope. Casually, he tossed it over a thick, ungiving branch of oak, perhaps ten feet off the ground. The other one slung his spent petronel pistol across his back, then tied the dead rabbit to the stirrup of his horse.
He looked up the road and saw Shakespeare, but ignored him and joined the bigger man. Together, they began pulling on the rope, hoisting the condemned man off the ground, his legs kicking frantically at the air. The executioners seemed unconcerned, bored even, as though this was their daily work.
‘What is this?’ Shakespeare demanded, urging his horse forward close to the hanging tree.
‘Deserter. What’s it to you?’ the plough-horse man said.
The two hangmen nonchalantly knotted the loose end of the rope around a lower branch, to secure it. The man with the petronel wore the Queen’s escutcheon on his tawny cassock and seemed to be in charge. There was a pitiless quality to his eyes. Half his face was badly disfigured, as though his cheek had been shot away. The remainder of his face had black spots, like parchment on which ink has been flicked. Shakespeare guessed it had been peppered with fragments of shot.
The rope creaked as the knot was pulled tight. Shakespeare moved his horse closer, drew his sword and slashed at the hempen cord, just above the condemned man’s head. The steel blade, new-honed and as sharp as a scythe at harvest-time, sliced through the fibres with one strike.
The man fell helplessly to the hard, dusty earth, cracked his knees, crumpled and tipped face-forward with a juddering crunch to the nose and forehead. Shakespeare jumped from his horse and, pulling out his poniard, cut the noose away from the man’s neck. He lay there, still, then sucked in a short, desperate measure of air. He gasped again, the breath rattling in his throat.
Four hands dragged Shakespeare away and flung him, sprawling, into a hedge. The leader, his pocked, callous face lacking any emotion – not even wrath – strode over and put his boot in the middle of Shakespeare’s chest. He took a wheel-lock pistol from his belt and aimed it at the bridge of Shakespeare’s nose, dead between the eyes.
‘I could kill you here and now, you maggot’s arse.’
Shakespeare grabbed at the booted foot and tried in vain to lift it and twist it so he could roll away and get up.
‘You are wondering who I am. Well, my name’s Pinkney. Does that mean anything to you?’
Pinkney removed his foot and Shakespeare rose to his feet, dusting himself down, then looked at the man. The name meant nothing.
‘Provost Marshal Pinkney, under orders to press men for the wars in Brittany and hang deserters and outlaws. You have interfered with lawful business here. I should shoot you dead as I just shot that rabbit.’ He nodded towards the wretched, skinny carcass hanging from the stirrup.
The half-hanged man was now on his knees, face down in the dirt with his hands still tight bound behind him, coughing and rasping as blood dripped from his mouth. He was struggling to say something.
‘Rope him again, Cordwright,’ Pinkney ordered his assistant. ‘He hasn’t done dancing his jig.’
‘No, wait!’ Shakespeare held up his hand. ‘I am John Shakespeare, an officer of Sir Robert Cecil. I want to hear what the man has to say for himself.’ He stepped forward and placed himself between the condemned man and the provost. Kneeling at the man’s side, he cradled his battered head. ‘Who are you?’
The man could not speak, but he looked like no common soldier or deserter. Shakespeare would have taken him for a clerk or scribe; the skin of his face and hands was soft and pallid.
‘Who is this man, Mr Pinkney?’ Shakespeare said, trying to lift the hanged man from the ground. ‘Get me drink to wet his lips so that we may listen to him.’
‘I say he is a deserter, so that is what he is. Martial law, Mr Shakespeare, martial law. These are hard times and I am authorised to work in the interests of England. Captain-General Norreys needs all the men he can get for the Royal Army, even vermin like this. And as this man won’t go to the wars, though he has cost the Queen sixteen shillings for coat and conduct, and three shillings for a pikestaff, I say he is a deserter and will hang for it. Look at his good broadcloth venetians, his kersey nether-stocks and his new shoes! In faith, this is good English justice, Mr Shakespeare, and I will not be balked by you, Cecil or any man save Sir John Norreys himself.’