‘I am brought to penury, Mr Shakespeare. I cannot work as a tutor without a recommendation from the Countess of Shrewsbury, and she will not give me one. Nor can I sell my odes, for no one has coin in these straitened times.’
‘What do you bring me? If you wish to stay out of Newgate, you had best tell the whole truth, and soon.’
‘I will tell you nothing without assurances of freedom — and silver. You have to protect me.’
Shakespeare cupped his hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘Protect you, Morley? All you will get is iron, fire and the Tyburn halter if you do not tell me everything I wish to know.’
‘Tyburn!’ the prisoner attempted to laugh at the dread word, but it came out as a sour bark. ‘Tyburn holds no terrors. It would be a blessed release from my woes. Nothing you threaten can make me more afraid than I am already, Mr Shakespeare. The men I talk of have forgot more about inflicting pain than the Spanish Inquisition ever learned.’
‘Why have you come to me?’
‘I told you: I need your protection. There is no one I can trust and I took you for an honourable man. You must give me the means to get to a place of sanctuary, as far from this rotten town as a man may go. Give me that and you shall have all the information you require.’
‘How much do you think you need?’
‘A hundred sovereigns. No less than that. I must have money to leave here and start life anew.’
‘I could not find such a sum and you know it, Mr Morley.’
‘Cecil could.’
‘Then give me something worth taking him. He would laugh and order in Topcliffe if I brought what you have told me thus far.’
The turnkey returned with ale. He was a gnat of a man, no more than four and a half foot tall, but square built. His keys rattled at his belt. In one hand he carried two beakers of musty ale. He picked a large lump of something unpleasant from his nose and scraped it into one of the beakers, which he handed to Morley before exiting with a smirk.
Morley hurled the defiled beaker of ale to the ground.
‘This is your life now, Morley, or what is left of it,’ Shakespeare said, handing him his own stale liquor. ‘If you do not cooperate with me you will live with rats and taste London’s prison holes until the hurdle draws you to your death.’
‘I will tell you what I know. But you will have no names from me until you return with one hundred sovereigns.’
‘Speak, then.’
Morley supped from Shakespeare’s ale and immediately spat it out with a retching noise.
‘Start with Marlowe. You said you were the intended victim, but that cannot be — Poley knew Marlowe well. There could have been no error there.’
‘This is poison, not ale!’
‘Marlowe…’
Morley wiped his grubby, threadbare velvet sleeve across his mouth and tangled beard. ‘I have oftentimes being confused with Marlowe. Our names can sometimes sound the same and we were both university wits and poets from Cambridge. But that is by the by. The one who ordered the killing was befuddled. He believed Marlowe wrote the placards by the Dutch church. An easy mistake to make — why, even the Council was deceived, so I am told.’
‘But it was you?’
He shook his head. ‘Not me alone. A group of us. But the one who paid for Marlowe’s death believed I was a threat to him, for I recognised him and realised he was not what he seemed. He will know soon enough, though, that he has had the wrong man killed.’
‘Was he one of your confederates?’
‘I cannot tell you. But I do now believe they want me dead, for they are convinced that I have betrayed them.’
‘But who are they?’
‘Bring me the sovereigns.’
‘Tell me — without names, if you must — what manner of people are they?’
Morley hesitated, as if wondering how much information he could afford to divulge.
‘I must have at least this, Morley.’ Shakespeare’s voice was less harsh. ‘The ones who wrote the placards must be the powdermen, yes?
‘Do not ask too much, or we will both die.’
‘Well?’
‘Mr Shakespeare, I will help you all I can. But I beg you to be circumspect. We — this group and I — wish to see the strangers sent home from our midst. There are many others. More than the Council could ever imagine: apprentices, merchants, even noblemen… men who do not like the strangers’ ways. They take our business. Why, I do believe the Countess of Shrewsbury herself has replaced me with a German or some such. They are like leeches or some canker on the body of England.’
‘But among these many opponents of the strangers, there is this smaller group? A core of men prepared to use force of arms and powder to achieve their ends?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many?’
‘Six… ten sometimes. They used me for the poster-writing, for I have some small skill with words, but I think they never intended I should live. Not once he had seen me and realised I recognised him…’
‘He?’
Morley said nothing.
‘Was Glebe among them? Walstan Glebe?’
Morley seemed to think a moment, then shook his head slowly. ‘I know no one of that name.’
‘And Poley — Robert Poley — how was he connected to this band of malcontents?’
‘He was not. Poley is nothing but a hireling. A killer for money, a mercenary. Had he been one of these men, there would have been no confusion.’
Shakespeare was silent a moment; that was just how he saw Poley. But he also knew that Poley had connections. He in sinuated himself with those on whom he would prey. ‘This core group — they are the ones who wrote the libels and placed the powder?’
Morley sighed heavily, his narrow shoulders rising and falling as his mouth opened and fell closed. ‘We all did write the words — though I confess it was I who put it into verse — but there was but one powderman, I believe.’
Shakespeare moved forward, drawing his dagger seamlessly and putting its point to Morley’s naked throat. ‘Give me his name, Morley.’ His voice now was a rasp. ‘Give me the name, for you have already told me enough to order you racked till every bone in your body crack asunder. And I will do it, for the Council would demand it of me.’
Morley recoiled from the sharp tip. A spot of blood dripped from his Adam’s apple on to the stained falling band about his neck. Shakespeare saw that he was shaking.
‘Fifty, Mr Shakespeare. I beg you. Find me fifty sovereigns and you shall have it all.’
‘The name!’
‘I will not. It is the one thing that can save me. I will give it to no man without having the silver and freedom that I must have. Elsewise I am dead, whether racked or no.’
Chapter 9
Sir Robert Cecil sat in a straight-backed chair and remained perfectly still as a barber shaved his whiskers from his cheeks, leaving moustaches and a neat beard, which he trimmed into a point. As Shakespeare entered the room, the privy councillor snatched a towel and dabbed at his face. ‘John, I am glad you have come to me. I was about to send for you. There is a change of plan.’
The barber did not wait to be dismissed, but immediately bowed and left the room, carrying his razor, strop and basin.
Shakespeare had been shown straight through to Cecil’s coolly efficient rooms at Greenwich Palace. There were dark, polished shelves here, a plain walnut table, two straight-backed chairs, an inkpot and quills; nothing superfluous to his needs as privy councillor with responsibility for the day-to-day management and security of the realm. He was not a man to clutter his desk with books and scrolls. Business was attended to, then filed away. The room was a reflection of Cecil’s own unflustered demeanour, yet today he seemed strangely agitated.
‘Sir Robert, I have an important development to report,’ Shakespeare said, bowing lightly in deference to his master.