‘And Glebe?’
‘Yes, I think I know a way to him. What favour will you do me in return?’
‘What do you want?’ Shakespeare glanced around the room with its exquisite plasterwork, carved oak furnishings and delicate tapestries. ‘You have gold aplenty.’
The ale arrived and they both drank deeply. At last Henbird wiped his gold-threaded sleeve across his mouth. ‘I want to be part of it, John. I want to be part of your world once more. This chicken warrant is most lucrative, but it wearies me to distraction. I would gladly not see another ledger or profit sheet in my life.’
Shakespeare looked Henbird in the eye and saw that he was being utterly serious. Suddenly he leaned forward, reached out his hand across the table and shook Henbird’s firmly. ‘Call it a trade, Nick. I need help and I can think of no one I would rather employ than you. You are well placed and I have a task for you, if you will take it.’
‘Anything, John, anything to get me away from talk of fowl.’
‘But first tell me a way to Glebe.’
‘As you will. I believe I do have a way. Have you heard of Black Lucy?’
‘Why, yes.’
‘Glebe has long had an obsession with the whore. She is succubus to him. He worships her glistening black hide — can’t get enough of it.’
‘From what I have heard, he is not alone in that.’
‘Indeed, John, she is a most wondrous exotic creature. Pope, saint or archbishop would be sore tempted by that one. I confess I have partaken of the fruit myself on occasion. A man could spend his family’s fortune on Luce and not rue the day he first saw her. I know and like her well. When once you see her in puris naturalibus, you will desire no other.’
‘Will she help me find him?’
Henbird spread out the plump palms of his hands. ‘If she likes you, if you pay her enough, if she wants to do Glebe a bad turn — any one of those may bring you to him. But tread carefully and treat her well, for she is a greater gift to London than all the beasts in the menagerie.’
‘One more question, Nick: you worked with Poley in the Babington inquiry of ’86. Who does he work for now?’
‘The same man he always worked for — himself. Other than that, I have heard tell that he has connections to Essex House and to Thomas Walsingham. They all do — Poley, Frizer and Skeres. Frizer has been Walsingham’s servant. Poley and Skeres worked with him against the Babington plot. But Thomas Walsingham has no interest in such things now. He is a country gentleman, tending his estates in Kent, dabbling with poetry.’
Shakespeare thought of Thomas Walsingham. Was any man more different from his kin? He was a warm, good-natured man, as far removed from his uncle Francis, the Queen’s late principal secretary, as it was possible to be. He could not see him as the puppet master pulling these strings. Yet nothing could be ruled out in such affairs.
‘Give me your opinion. Who was behind the Marlowe killing? Who was the paymaster and what was the motive?’
Henbird was a man who had stayed alive in the lethal underworld of spies, assassins and traitors by knowing when to talk and when not. ‘That would be an opinion too far, John. My neck might be thicker than a chicken’s, yet it is equally susceptible to the farm-wife’s blade.’
‘You said you wished to go intelligencing again, Nick. I had not thought you afraid of farm-wives.’
‘Do not underestimate farm-wives, nor Queen’s servants…’
Shakespeare nodded. He understood. Queen’s servants. ‘Topcliffe?’
‘You said the name, not I.’
‘But why?’
‘That is for you to discover. And there is the one that said most recently that Marlowe should be silenced…’
‘Baines. Richard Baines.’ Shakespeare frowned. It was a name that had cropped up in his investigations, even before Marlowe’s death. Baines, another sometime spy for Walsingham, had written a tract against Marlowe within the past month in which he said that all Christians should ‘endeavour that the mouth of so dangerous a member be stopped’.
‘Again, John, you said the name. I believe he complained of Kit Marlowe’s irreverence. But that did not sit well with me, for I do not recall Rick Baines having much in the way of religion. Anyway, his wish came true, for Marlowe’s mouth was indeed stopped. Does that mean he did it, though?’
‘It would not be the first man he had killed in cold blood.’ Topcliffe and Baines. Shakespeare tried to find a connection between the two men. What an unholy alliance. ‘You have said enough, Nick. Now, my small task for you: I wish you to discover what you may about a man named Oliver Kettle, presently a servant in the house of a Dutch wool merchant named Jan Sluyterman, of Dowgate. I have a notion about him. But be careful.’
‘As always, John. And the fee?’
‘First find me some information, then ask that.’
‘Ah yes, I had forgot, you learned thrift from Mr Secretary…’
Chapter 6
Boltfoot Cooper rode across London Bridge, beneath the severed heads of traitors. He did not look up; he knew they were there, parboiled and pecked at by the kites, and he had no wish to see them.
Once away from the bridge, he turned east and followed the river along the Deptford road, a track of dust and holes. The road was heavy with an endless train of long open-sided carts, laden with felled oaks and casks of provisions for the shipyards. He passed a line of six great wagons — each pulled by six oxen — that bore mighty guns to arm the Navy Royal. Boltfoot glanced at them: culverin, demi-culverin, saker, minion, falconet. This was ordnance to stir the blood and strike fear into enemy hearts: the culverin, two tons of bronze that could fire seventeen-pound iron balls into the bulwarks and gunwales of King Philip’s galleons; the cannon-perier, a stumpy gun that hurled round stones at ships, shattering into deadly shards as they hit a deck or mast.
Boltfoot was not stirred. The sea and its battles had long since lost their hold over him; three years under the command of Drake as he sailed the globe had seen to that.
After a mile and a half he turned left, on to the spit of land that bulged into the Thames. There were docks and industry, and bustling villages housing the lightermen and those who worked at loading and unloading the carracks heading for the Indies. In clearings beside the road he began to see charcoal burners at work, the smoke rising from their stacks of willow, and then he came to a wooded area close to the water’s edge and saw the stockade protecting the Rotherhithe powdermill.
There were several buildings, scattered over two or three acres and sheltered by trees. Boltfoot understood the need for such a siting: if the powder store exploded, the canopy of trees would muffle the explosion and protect the nearby shipping and dockyards.
Reining in to a slow walk, he rode around the perimeter of the stockaded area. The enclosure was between eight and nine feet high, built of stakes driven into the ground close together to form a palisade. It would be possible to scale with a ladder, unwatched at night. But how good were the guards on the other side?
He approached the front gate, but as he tried to ride on through he was immediately stopped by a pair of sentries. They stepped out in front of him. Both had crossbows at their shoulders, drawn taut, bolts loaded and aimed directly at his chest. Behind them, three ban-dogs in studded collars were leashed to the small guardhouse, slavering and growling.
Boltfoot dropped the reins and put his hands in the air to show he was no threat.
‘I am here on Queen’s business,’ he said. ‘I am to see the keeper.’
The sentries looked like military men to Boltfoot. They were both powerfully built and wore jerkins of hide. They had neat-trimmed beards and bold faces, the sort of men any captain-general would have been happy to have at his disposal. ‘Dismount,’ said one of them, who was slightly taller and more imposing than the other. ‘No sudden movements.’