‘It seems you have me protected like the royal jewels. I know not whether to be honoured or afraid.’
Shakespeare nodded, but he was too fatigued for conversation. A fine mattress and bedding had been brought for him. He unfurled the mattress across the doorway, laid himself down and fell straight into a deep sleep.
Shakespeare awoke before dawn. From a few feet away, slumbering in the great four-poster bed, he heard the intermittent sleep-sounds of Dr Dee: a deep, pig-like grunt of a breath followed by a minute’s silence, then another rasp. Each breath sounded like a death rattle.
Half dressing in breeches and shirt, he lifted the iron latch of the door, carefully so as not to wake Dee. Outside the room, a low-burnt candle cast light on the two guards. Oxx was asleep on the floor but stirred instantly at the opening of the door. Godwit was awake and his eyes were sharp. Good. That was how Shakespeare wanted it: one must always be alert while the other drowsed.
He nodded to the guards and walked down the dim stairway on soundless, bare feet. The first light of day etched the great hall of Lathom House in a grey tinge. From outside he heard the clatter of iron-rimmed wheels on cobblestones.
Pushing open the main entrance door, he was straightway confronted by a halberdier in a dazzling corslet of steel.
‘Up early, master?’
‘I am looking for the kitchens or bakehouse for meat and bread to break my fast.’
The halberdier held out his arm westwards, along the inside of the battlements. ‘Past all these wains. Third door along, master. They’re all in there working now. You’ll have bread crusty and hot.’
‘I arrived last evening. Where do guests normally eat, pray?’
‘There’s a second, smaller hall off the great hall. In ordinary times, all would meet there at eight o’clock, but this past day, with his lordship’s illness, the ladies and gentlemen come and go at will.’
Shakespeare walked in the direction of the kitchens. The cobbled pathway was banked up with wagons and drays, their drivers waiting patiently to edge forward so that they might unload produce or collect empty barrels. Three men were shouldering kegs into a wide, double-doored entrance. He glanced in. It was a long, dark storehouse with a hundred or more casks of various sizes disappearing into the depths. Game hung from hooks. Further along, a second, smaller door opened on to a large scullery. Six drabs were at work polishing silver plate and copper pots.
Then came the kitchens, which were immense, the greatest Shakespeare had seen outside Windsor Castle. A central room was lit by three blazing fires in hearths that were each of sufficient size to roast a whole ox. This lime-slaked room gave out on to six more galleries. One, Shakespeare could see, was a store for flesh, another was a bakery, yet another the pastry house. Men and women, perhaps forty of them, came and went, sweating with the heat and energy of the place, working at stone benches and wooden blocks, carrying food and carcasses or tending the fires. None paid Shakespeare heed.
He stayed a man in a full-length apron, hoisting a basket of loaves on his shoulder.
‘I wish to speak with Mr Dowty, the Clerk of the Kitchen,’ he said.
‘Are you delivering? He won’t see you unless you have an appointment.’
‘Just tell me where to find him. He will see me.’
The baker laughed. ‘Well, you’ll find him through there, shouting. Can’t you hear him?’
Dowty was in the wet larder, using a three-pound pike to beat the head of a boy aged about ten.
‘Call that scaling?’ he berated the boy. ‘You’ll be drowned in the pond where the fish came from if you leave scales like that again.’ Another smack on the head, then he spotted Shakespeare and his mood changed. ‘Good morning, master.’
‘Good day, Mr Dowty.’
Dowty pushed out his chest, then looked him up and down as if appraising a side of pig. His eyes came to rest on Shakespeare’s bare feet.
‘How may I help you, sir? Fresh manchet bread, some eggs, a pair of shoes? If you return to the hall, I’ll have you served.’
‘My name is John Shakespeare and I am on Queen’s business. Mr Cole will have told you to expect me.’ Shakespeare had noted the insolence in the man’s tone and was having none of it.
‘Indeed, but I have work to do. We have a large house and estate to feed with a company of players added on. And I am responsible for it.’
‘There are questions I will have answered unless you wish to be taken into custody, held in shackles and arraigned before the Ormskirk justice.’
Dowty was a short man, but bulky and strong. He had little hair and his chins tumbled down over his collar. ‘Ask your question, then, and be quick about it.’
‘I shall take all the time I like, Mr Dowty. Firstly, what did the earl eat in the hours before he fell ill?’
Dowty slapped the pike into his hand. The boy he had been hitting shrank back nervously and took the opportunity to scuttle from the room.
‘Do you think I poisoned him? Is that what you are suggesting? Well, if you must know, his food that day was none of our doing here at Lathom. He was at Knowsley. You’ll have to go there.’
‘And where were you while he was there?’
Dowty said nothing, merely glared at Shakespeare as though he would gut him and scale him like the fish.
‘Who is his taster?’
‘I am his taster.’
‘You run his kitchens and taste his food?’
‘Why should I not? If anyone wishes to poison my lord of Derby, they’ll have to kill me first. And what cook would poison his master if, in doing so, he had to poison himself?’
‘So who tasted his food when he hunted at Knowsley?’
‘I did. I went with him.’
‘Do I have to draw every piece of information out of you? Why are you not cooperating? Do you not wish your lord and master to recover?’
‘Of course I want him to recover. But do you think I did not see this coming – the suspicion, the inquisition? I knew you’d be straight round here and I do not like it. Is there a more offensive slur than to come into a man’s kitchen and accuse him of poisoning those he feeds? Oh, I’ll answer your questions, but I also wish a plague of hornets on you—’
‘How long has the earl used your services as a taster?’
‘He never bothered until last September. The Hesketh matter changed everything around here. Since then he has not tasted so much as a mouthful of cheese without me trying it first.’
‘So you were with him at the Knowsley chase. I ask again, what did he eat in the hours before his sickness?’
Dowty put the fish down on a slab, then held up his left thumb.
‘One, he broke his fast with cold beef, cold pigeon pie, a half-pint of beer – small beer – Lancashire cheese, manchet bread, scrambled duck egg. Two …’ He held up his index finger. ‘He had a hearty stirrup cup of aqua celestis and two small saffron cakes. Three …’ He thrust up the middle finger. ‘We had a midday repast of roast venison and roast capon, with a beaker of songbird broth. And he had another hearty cup of brandy and a quart of beer. I love my master, Mr Shakespeare, but I would be lying to you if I denied he was a voluptuary. Enjoys his wine and food, the earl. And I sampled it all. If any of it was poisoned or bad, then I should be vomiting my guts up, too.’
‘What, then, has caused this?’
‘You’re not from these parts or you wouldn’t need to ask that. The Jesuits got him, that’s what has happened. They’re having their vengeance for the death of the traitor Hesketh. Beguiled him with their rites and magic.’
Shakespeare’s brow creased. ‘Are you suggesting Jesuit priests used witchcraft against him?’ He snorted at the absurdity of the suggestion. ‘They are more likely to burn witches than use their Satanic arts, Mr Dowty.’