Shakespeare and Andrew reined in beside a field in Cambridgeshire. The day was cold. Flurries of snow were in the air, though none of it was settling on the ground.
They looked across a bleak field of beet that had failed and fallen to weed and rot.
‘Over there,’ Andrew said.
A thin trail of smoke rose from a small fire at the other side of the field, near a spinney. A horse was tethered to a tree and a piece of tarpaulin had been stretched across a lattice of branches to make a small shelter.
They kicked on across the field. A figure rose from beside the fire and edged towards the horse as though about to mount up, ride away and escape. But then the figure stopped.
They could see her clearly now. Her fair hair and pinched face, her slender arms and waist. And she could see them, for she started walking towards them. Andrew slid from the saddle and walked towards her. Shakespeare held back and watched from twenty yards’ distance.
Ursula had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She hunched into it.
‘Andrew pigging Woode,’ she said. ‘Fancy you being alive.’
‘Thanks to you, Ursula pigging Dancer.’
She laughed. ‘Soldier, now, are you?’
He nodded and glanced across to Shakespeare, who shrugged his shoulders. He had other ideas.
‘So what are you doing here?’
‘Looking for you. Reaphook told me where you came from. I thought you’d come looking for your family.’
She laughed again, but without smiling this time. ‘Shouldn’t have bothered, should I? Knocked at the door of their great manor house and this old servant told me to go away. I said I was family, long-lost kin. He looked at me as if I was a dog turd and went away. Then he came back with this evil old woman with a walking stick. Well, she stared at me and it was as if she’d seen a pigging ghost or something. Staffy always said I looked like my mother, so I suppose she thought I was her. I think the woman was my grandmother, but all she did was start hitting me with her stick. Beat me around the head with it, and she could hit hard for an old one.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I ran. What else should I do? I know when I’m not pigging wanted. Shouldn’t have gone there. Why would I want anything to do with people like that?’
‘Come home with us. We’re your family now.’
She huddled deeper into the blanket and looked away.
‘There’s nothing for you here, Ursula. You just said so yourself.’
She was shaking her head. ‘I won’t fit in. Didn’t fit in at that house in the shire of Kent, did I? They treated me like a skivvy and kept making dirty remarks about me. And they knew I heard them. Called me slut and drab and thief.’
‘Well, you are a thief! You stole their horse to prove it.’
‘I didn’t steal the nag, I borrowed it. Anyway, that’s by the by. I’m not a slut nor a drab.’
‘No, you’re not. So come with us. What have you got to lose?’
‘I don’t know.’
Shakespeare had dismounted now. He walked to her and put an arm around her shoulder. ‘You’ll work for us, but you won’t be a skivvy. You’ll help Jane with the children and the running of the house, and we’ll give you an education. Teach you to read and write.’
‘What do I want with reading and writing? How will that help me go a-sharking?’
‘There’ll be no more of that. And you’ll understand why you should learn to read and write, once you try it.’
‘Why you doing this for me?’
‘Because we esteem you highly. And we need an extra pair of hands. We’re moving into a new house and there will be a great deal to do. More than anything, you’ll cheer the place up. The children have had a tough time these past months. I know they’ll take to you. Say you’ll come. We like you.’
Her face creased up. For a moment, Andrew thought he saw a tear forming in her eye, then rejected the very notion as ridiculous. Ursula Dancer didn’t cry.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘Oh, of course I’ll pigging come.’
Acknowledgments
As always, I am indebted to many people for their support and help. I would particularly like to mention Michael Riordan, archivist of St John’s and the Queen’s Colleges, Oxford, for giving me his valuable time, and Bill Clements, chairman of the Fortress Study Group, www.fsgfort.com. My thanks, too, to my wife Naomi, editor Kate Parkin and agent Teresa Chris.
Books that have been especially helpful include: Hamlet’s Divinity by Christopher Devlin; The Queen’s Conjuror by Benjamin Woolley; Sir John Norreys and the Elizabethan Military World by John S. Nolan; The Fraternitye of Vacabondes by John Awdeley; A Caveat or Warning for Commen Cursetors vulgarely Called Vagabones by Thomas Harman; The Art of War and Renaissance England by John R. Hale; Shakespeare’s England, edited and introduced by R. E. Pritchard; Elizabethan Military Science by Henry J. Webb; Elizabeth’s Wars by Paul E. J. Hammer; Elizabeth’s Army by C. G. Cruickshank; The Elizabethan Militia by Lindsay Boynton; The English Yeoman by Mildred Campbell; The Works of Sir Roger Williams, edited by John X. Evans; Martin Frobisher by James McDermott; The Telescope by Richard Dunn; Surveillance, Militarism and Drama in the Elizabethan Era by Curtis C. Breight; Shakespeare’s Military Language by Charles Edelman; Manavilins by Rex Clements; The University of Oxford: A New History by G. R. Evans; The Colleges of Oxford: Their History and Traditions, edited by Andrew Clark; The Earls of Derby 1485–1985 by J. J. Bagley.
Historical Notes
The Hesketh Affair: Timeline
1581
Dr John Dee, astrologer to the Queen, scientist and alchemist, is noted by spies as being friendly with Lancashire cloth merchant Richard Hesketh. Hesketh was in Antwerp as agent, a diplomatic post representing England’s commercial interests in the city. He shared an interest in alchemy with Dee, who was then in England, and the two men corresponded. Dee cast Hesketh’s horoscope.
1589
Richard Hesketh, now returned to Over Darwen, Lancashire, is implicated in the murder of a local landowner, Thomas Hoghton, in a dispute over cattle. Hesketh flees to Prague (then in Bohemia), where he joins the circle of Edward Kelley, a former counterfeiter from Lancashire, and also a former ‘scryer’ – medium – to Dr Dee.
1591
Christmas: Lord Strange’s Men – the players’ company that presented the first plays of William Shakespeare – triumph at court, staging six plays before the Queen at the seasonal court festivities.
Ferdinando, Lord Strange, who is descended from Henry VII through his mother’s line, is a prime claimant to the throne of England and the toast of high society.
1592
13 June: A spy in Brussels named Robinson reports to his masters in England, ‘There is certainly intelligence between Strange and the Cardinal [William Allen].’ Strange is now suspected of being a crypto-Catholic. His younger brother William, a friend of Dr Dee, is more favoured by the Cecil faction at court.
1593