She opened the carriage door and stepped out. Nearby, just out of earshot, she saw that the captain of the troop of men was conversing with her keeper, the Puritan Sir Amyas Paulet. She began to walk towards them. The captain slid from his horse, bowed low to the Queen of Scots.
‘My lady,’ he began. Not the Your Majesty that her own people would use as a mark of respect. ‘My lady, a plot has been uncovered to kill the Queen. I am under orders to take you into custody and await instructions.’
‘A conspiracy, Captain? What has this to do with me?’
‘I simply obey. You will come with me now.’
Whether she was overcome by a slight fainting fit or whether it was an act of defiance was unclear, but she instantly collapsed to the ground and sat on the grass. ‘I will die here. Shoot me if you will.’ And then she put her hands together and began to pray.
Did they look like farmworkers? Could five young men, gently born and reared, truly transform themselves into peasants with a change of clothes, rough cutting of hair and the application of walnut juice and dirt to weather their faces?
Anthony Babington had his doubts, but he had no other notion of what to do. His companions – John Charnock, Robert Gage, the Irishman Robert Barnwell and Henry Dunn
– looked to him for leadership and so this was his decision. Somehow they would make their way out of this wood, find horses and go their separate ways to the coast where they would try to secure passage to France.
After days without food or shelter, they were in a hayloft beneath the roof of a barn on the estate of the moated manor of Uxendon Hall, home of the Bellamy family. They would find assistance there, for none in England was more true to the old faith than the Bellamys. Henry Dunn had already gone to sound out the family. Babington was certain he would return soon with food and the promise of horses.
He heard a sound outside and signalled with his hand for silence. Peering down to the gaping doorway of the barn, he sighed with relief. It was Henry, and he had two of the Bellamys with him, Bartholomew and Jerome, both of them good Catholics and occasional members of the Pope’s White Sons. They were carrying a basket, covered with white linen; so there would be food and ale.
Hope had been in short supply these past few days, sleeping in the bracken, listening for sounds and then hurriedly moving on when they heard the barking of dogs as the searchers mounted their hue and cry. But there was hope now. God and this godly family would save them.
No one was better than Jonas Shoe at watching and waiting. He had been in the woods near Uxendon Hall for five days, observing the comings and goings of the household. And now it had paid off. He allowed himself a smile. A young man poorly disguised as a farmworker, with neither the strength of arm nor the gait of a labourer, had appeared at the back door to the old manor house. Now, an hour later, he had emerged and this time he had two of the young men of the house with him.
It was the easiest thing in the world to follow them, for it did not even seem to occur to them that they were being watched. So here they were at last, walking into the barn. Shoe moved closer and listened. Yes, there were other voices there. With the newcomers, he was certain there were at least six. He had found his quarry. All that remained now was to fetch the pursuivants.
Shoe slipped away into the woods and headed for the eastern highway.
Chapter 47
The dark, brooding face of Sir Francis Walsingham peered closely into Shakespeare’s eyes. ‘Are you well again, John?’ ‘Well enough, Sir Francis.’
‘Your wounds are healed?’
‘I fear it will be some little time before my ribs are fully knitted together. Three of them were broken, as was my collarbone. I keep my chest braced with tight bandages, like a child in swaddling bands.’
‘And your head?’
‘The fall rendered me unconscious for a minute or two, but there seems to be no further complication, God be thanked.’ The physician had said he was fortunate to be alive, that the skull had broken behind the temple when he bounced off the sharp edge of the scaffold onto the hard ground. The blow would have killed many another man. But that was not to be dwelt on; not here, not now. He had already spent too many days and nights recuperating.
‘Good.’ Walsingham limped away from the object of his concerned inquiries and sat in a straight-backed chair at the end of the table. ‘And it is most gracious of you to make the journey here, for I am ailed by another damnable furuncle, and the gout never leaves me. Which is why I cannot travel to London.’
‘The trip upriver was a pleasant change from my own sickbed.’ Shakespeare smiled at the Principal Secretary, not believing for a moment that he was prevented from travelling to London by a common boil and his new-discovered gout; this was a political absence. He did not wish to be anywhere near the courts of law lest his own part in the Babington affair be suspected.
‘You will doubtless have heard of the arrest of Babington and others,’ the Principal Secretary continued, as though reading his intelligencer’s mind.
He nodded. Yes, he had heard the story of Babington’s arrest from Mills who called on him as soon the news came. ‘It was my man Shoe as found them,’ Mills had said with an unpleasant laugh, his pride all too evident. ‘A poacher of men, my Mr Shoe. They had walnut juice on their faces to look like ploughmen!’
Shakespeare had heard, too, of the arrest of the Queen of Scots, though no one seemed clear what would become of her.
And then came the trials of the Pope’s White Sons. The verdicts were a foregone conclusion and their executions were imminent. The streets were once again filled with Londoners rejoicing, lighting their bonfires, burning their effigies, drinking themselves insensible.
He put the thought aside. The prospect of all the blood and pain that had already been suffered in the torture chamber and the yet more gruesome spectacle to come seemed mercifully distant in the quiet of Walsingham’s dim office at Barn Elms. It had been good to leave London; the celebrations in the streets were hard to endure. The river journey had been a pleasant contrast, reclining in the back of a tilt-boat enjoying the late summer sun and the warm breeze.
A serving man entered and placed a tray with two silver goblets and a flask of French brandy at his master’s side, then bowed quickly and departed.
‘The events at Thames Street are a great sadness,’ Walsingham said, his sincerity evident. ‘It is tragical that they could not both be saved.’
Shakespeare said nothing. He did not know what to say. The word tragical hardly did justice to the terrible outcome of that grim morning when Kat and Sorbus swung from the gibbet.
‘I do believe the angels weep each time an innocent dies, especially in such circumstances,’ Walsingham continued.
‘Perhaps the punishment is at fault,’ Shakespeare said. ‘If a penalty cannot be undone when a verdict is reversed . . .’
Walsingham shook his head slowly. ‘I hear you well, John, but I cannot agree with you. What is the alternative to hanging? A sentence of life imprisonment? I do believe God would rage at such cruel treatment. Would you wish to sit in a cage for years without end? I would not treat a mad dog so. Death is quick. And if an error has been made, we can at least comfort ourselves with the certainty that the soul will fly straight to God’s bosom.’
Shakespeare wished he were convinced, but there was no more to say on the subject. What was done was done and the penalty for murder would never change. For the present, he was more concerned about the fate of Huckerbee and Abigail, and mentioned their names to Walsingham. ‘My man Boltfoot Cooper tells me they have both been freed. How can this be so?’
‘Ah, yes, Sir Robert Huckerbee. A corrupt and rotten man. He has been relieved of all his duties in the office of my lord Burghley and will retire to his country estate. He will also pay the crown ten thousand pounds in gold, in lieu of sums which he is believed to have embezzled.’