Boltfoot grunted, which Shakespeare took to be a yes.
“Find me a mariner who has been there, one from the very first voyage when the colonists were carried to their new home, if you can. Or listen for tales. Discover what is being said, what the seafarers believe happened to the souls now lost. Are they dead or alive? If dead, how did they die? If alive, where might they be? I want to know the conditions out there, how they might have survived. Most of all, I wish to know whether any of the colonists might somehow have returned to England.”
Boltfoot looked at Jane, as if hoping she might tell his master that he could not possibly go on such a mission because he was needed here, to look out for her in these last few weeks.
“Thank you, Master Shakespeare,” Jane said. “I am sure it is useful work and it will do us both a world of good. He needs something else to think on.”
“Good. Well, that’s settled. I will talk with you alone regarding the details, Boltfoot.” Shakespeare turned back to Jane. His voice softened and he hesitated, unsure. “Pray tell me, Jane, do you know where Mistress Shakespeare is this afternoon?”
Jane could not meet her master’s eyes. Her mistress had clearly said she had no wish to speak with her husband. “I do not think she is herself today, master. She says she wishes to be alone. She is with Mary.”
Shakespeare accepted the situation with a smile. “Thank you, Jane. When you see Mistress Shakespeare, please tell her that my thoughts are with her and that I understand. I must go to Essex House but I would see her later, should she wish it.”
“Yes, master,” Jane said, her gaze still averted, then hurried away as fast as her swollen belly would allow.
The sun was dipping and the sky had a hue of golds and reds. Tomorrow would be another hot day. “Let me finish my meats and then we will share a quart of ale, Boltfoot,” Shakespeare said. “I will tell you more of this Roanoke inquiry. It seems we are to go intelligencing again, my friend. You will have to dust down your caliver and hone your cutlass for the fray.” As he spoke, Shakespeare thought he saw a sparkle in the eye of his old copesmate. Perhaps Boltfoot would be happier away from the cares of impending fatherhood after all.
Shakespeare had never seen a woman more lovely. His first sight of her was at a distance, in profile, along the evening-shadowed long gallery of Essex House, and he was transfixed. The room had fine elm-wood paneling and frescoed walls with pictures of nymphs and satyrs in woodland scenes. She was laughing and her fair hair fell back across the soft skin of her nape and shoulder blades. Her neck was adorned by three strings of precious stones that looked to him like diamonds and rubies.
He was a married man and Catherine was to him the loveliest of God’s creations. And yet he could not take his eyes off this fair woman.
Slyguff walked a step ahead of him, his hand gripped on the hilt of a dagger that was thrust in the belt buckled tight about his narrow, wiry waist.
Only at the last moment, as they came near, did Shakespeare avert his gaze from the woman and see that she was with Charlie McGunn, deep in conversation.
The woman looked up with nonchalant curiosity at Shakespeare’s approach. Her eyes were black, like still, dark water. She raised an eyebrow questioningly. McGunn turned to him, too, and a grin broke across his fleshy, bald face. “Ah, Mr. Shakespeare, I believe you have seen sense. Welcome to the fold.”
“Thank you.”
“I hope you will introduce us, Mr. McGunn,” the woman said.
“My apologies, Lady Rich. This is Mr. Shakespeare. Mr. John Shakespeare.”
Shakespeare bowed. “My lady.” Of course, he had seen her portrait. Penelope Rich, sister of the Earl of Essex, was said to be the most beautiful woman at court, if not in the whole of England. It was an assessment that Shakespeare could not dispute.
“Mr. Shakespeare,” she said, “you must be brother to the other Mr. Shakespeare, the Earl of Southampton’s poet, for I can see that there is a little family likeness in your eyes and brow, though you are taller.”
“Indeed, my lady. And I am a little older, too.”
McGunn clasped his arm around Shakespeare’s shoulders. Too tight for friendship. Shakespeare winced at the memory of his viselike hand taking him by the throat. “Mr. Shakespeare has agreed to join our great enterprise of all the talents, Lady Penelope. He is to seek out and find the mysterious lost colonist, if one such really exists.”
“Oh, I am sure she exists, Mr. McGunn. It is an intriguing tale. Do find her, Mr. Shakespeare. I should so like to hear what she has to say for herself, about the perils she has endured in the New World and how she came to make her crossing of the ocean home to England. It will be the talk of the court. And, of course, it is certain to discomfit Ralegh, which will be most amusing.”
“I will do my utmost.”
She smiled the sweetest smile he had ever seen. “And I want you here tomorrow evening for the summer revels. Do say you will come.”
“Well, my lady…” He thought of Catherine, back home, turning from him, not even admitting him to her presence. How long was it since he had seen her smile at him like that?
McGunn’s grip about his shoulders tightened. “He’ll be there, Lady Rich. I’ll vouch for him.”
“That will be wonderful. I believe you were an intelligencer for Mr. Secretary Walsingham and saved Drake from some Spanish hellhound. I want to hear all about it from your own lips, Mr. Shakespeare. But for the moment, I am afraid I have to leave you.” She reached out and touched his face with the fingertips of her gloved right hand. “The She-wolf summons me and I must obey…”
He watched her move away from him along the hall. She wore a dress of gold and deep burgundy, almost brown in its intensity, with full embroidered sleeves and a sharply pointed bodice. From behind she seemed to glide, like a slender royal craft upon the Thames.
McGunn loosened his grip, then slapped him playfully on both sides of his face. It stung. “Watch yourself, Shakespeare. You’re a married man and she’s a married woman, and no good can come of it.”
“You do Lady Rich a disservice.”
McGunn laughed aloud. “But then, you don’t know the Devereux women, do you? It’s not for nothing that she calls her mother the She-wolf.”
“I heard it was Her Majesty the Queen that gave her the name.”
“Yes, but it was the She-wolf herself who earned it. Except that she hunts and eats men, not lambs in the field. And her daughters are no different.”
“I am astonished at your temerity, Mr. McGunn, to speak of the Earl of Essex’s mother and sisters so.”
“Would you have me kiss their feet?”
Who exactly was McGunn that he could display such disrespect and familiarity to Essex himself and to the ladies of his house? Shakespeare wondered. And how would the lady Lettice take it if she heard this man and her own daughter refer to her as the “She-wolf”?
McGunn opened a purse of soft leather and took out coins, which he handed to Shakespeare. “Here, fifteen marks in gold. Now, come with me. I run things for Essex and I have something to show you.”
Shakespeare took the coins, though he felt unclean in doing so. “Are you his steward? His factor?”
“What do you think, Slyguff? Is ‘steward’ the word for what I do for Essex?”
Slyguff said nothing.
“Ah, call me what you like, Shakespeare, I care nothing for titles. But a little warning before we proceed: never cross me. Never. For I always repay a slight. But if you are a good fellow, you will find me the truest friend a man ever had.” He grinned broadly, as though he had never made the threat. “Come. I will arrange letters-patent in my lord of Essex’s name. That will grant you access wherever you require it in your inquiries.”
They left Slyguff in the long hall and went up a narrow, twisting stairway of stone steps to a high room in a square turret at the back of the house. The room was tall-ceilinged with deep oriel windows, and lit by many candles. The three men seated there, poring over papers, looked up as they entered. Shakespeare recognized them all.