As he started to read, the candlelight guttered in the draught and seemed to shift the words, as though they had life.
‘John, if you are reading this letter, it means you have survived and I have died. My sadness is past. We met at a place and time where our joy could only ever be fleeting. I knew you could never be mine, not truly, for your love resided elsewhere and I was set on a course that could not be altered and which, I knew, you would never countenance, not in its entirety.
‘By the time you receive this, I will have explained to you about my father and his treatment by the Church corrupt. He was the finest man that ever lived and he was my life. You came closer to him than any man I have ever known. Just as I now know you were prepared to sacrifice your career and reputation in your quest for your boy, so I vowed to do all in my feeble power to further the cause my father fought for, for so many years. I think you probably now know what it involved. I will not attempt to justify all I have done, not here. Nor will I ask forgiveness, for I believe I have done no wrong. You will disagree with this, but perhaps one day you will find it in your heart to understand.
‘And so I bid you farewell. I would ask you to pray for me, and I will give thanks to God that you have lived through our great adventure. Fight for the right, John, with no quarter given. Yours, in love, Eliska.’
He had not known the depth of her passions. She had concealed them well. Except for once, one night in Lancashire when, unbeknownst to her, he had noted her tears. Now at last he began to understand why she wept.
What was less easy to understand was why she had invited death on the battlements of Fort El Léon. Why had she continued to wave her pathetic yellow flag, long after the need for it had passed? And then he began to realise: it was the same thing that had driven her all this time since her father’s killing; it was what made her come to Lathom House and then to Brittany, into the very maw of death. Just one word: defiance.
Shakespeare read the letter one last time, then held it to the candleflame and watched as it flared up and fluttered down in black ashes to the floor of his chamber.
He sniffed the air. He had slept only fitfully and was half awake. The room was utterly dark and there was a smell of burning. He did not move from the warmth of his bedclothes. All he wanted was to sleep. The smell must be the ashes of Eliska’s letter.
Except that it wasn’t. The burning stench was too strong, and there was smoke. He leapt up in his nightshirt. There was a fire. Somewhere in the house, there was fire. He threw open the window shutters and looked out. Flames licked from the window below. Black smoke belched out in the street. The house was ablaze.
‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’
He shouted the word again and again. There was no other word in the English language more likely to drag the sleeping into instant wakefulness. Opening the chamber door wide, he shouted again and again, willing his voice to be heard in every room in the house and beyond.
The darkness was absolute. Feeling his way by memory, he stumbled towards the chamber occupied by Grace and Mary. Quickly, he opened their shutters for a little moonlight, then pulled them roughly awake and from their beds. If only he had a lantern, something to light the way out of this building.
Mary began to cry. Grace rubbed her eyes sleepily and fought to return to her bed, but Shakespeare tugged at her arms.
‘Grace, we must leave the house. It is on fire.’
He lifted Mary over his shoulder and gripped Grace’s hand firmly in his and made for the door from their room.
Andrew called out from the gallery, but Shakespeare could not see him.
‘Get Jane and Boltfoot and the baby.’
‘They’re here. Not Boltfoot, but Jane and little John.’
Andrew coughed and spluttered as he spoke. At Shakespeare’s side, Mary began to wail. The smoke was getting to them all. Shakespeare tore scraps from Grace’s linen nightgown and gave squares to the children to hold against their faces.
‘Don’t wait,’ Shakespeare ordered into the black darkness. ‘Find your way down and try to make your way to the back of the house. If all else fails, break a window and throw yourselves into the river. Where’s Boltfoot?’
‘He wasn’t there when I awoke,’ Jane said, fear thickening her voice. ‘He must have gone downstairs.’
‘Stay close together. Open no doors. The whole of the front is on fire.’
Suddenly there was light. Flames burst through an open door into the hall below, casting hell-like patterns across the walls.
‘Run. You can see your way!’
With the fire broken through, they had light but little time. Together, they all made their way down the main staircase, shielding themselves from the leaping flames with their arms. In the hall, Shakespeare handed Mary and Grace over to Andrew.
‘Go, take them to safety.’
‘Boltfoot,’ Jane pleaded.
‘I’ll find him. Get yourself and the baby out of the house.’
He watched as they ran across the hall, chased by the flames. They made it into the kitchens and Andrew slammed the door shut behind them. Good, thought Shakespeare, anything to give them more time. Now, where was Boltfoot?
He heard a muffled groan. No words, just a deep-throated animal sound, faint and distant. It seemed to be coming from somewhere at the side of the house. Clutching a piece of nightshirt to his face and keeping low, Shakespeare ran towards the sound. The flames were rushing up the walls to the ceiling. This house was wood-framed. The seasoned oak burnt and roared as readily as logs in a hearth. Within a very little time they would be engulfed.
‘Boltfoot, where are you? Boltfoot! Boltfoot!’
He heard another sound, from the schoolroom. Shakespeare pushed through the open door. There were flames at the back of the room, curling up around the window. A body lay on the floor: Boltfoot, bound and gagged.
Shakespeare dragged Boltfoot by the arms, crouching low against the choking black smoke that billowed across the room and out into the hall. It was now thick with an acrid cloud. He knew they had to stay below the smoke or, within moments, they would be overcome and die. There was no time to unbind him and he had no blade to cut the cords that held him tight.
He slung his assistant over his shoulder like a sack of beets and thanked God he was a squat, lean man with little in the way of weight to drag them down. Now which way? He was lost, disoriented. He had a sudden horror: they were going to die here, suffocated in their own home.
Scrabbling around, he pulled Boltfoot off his back and dragged him by his shoulders. A face loomed out of the darkness: Andrew. Sweat dripped in soot-black rivulets from his forehead and streaked his cheeks. He was crawling towards them, a damp cloth about his mouth and nostrils. He handed wet rags to Shakespeare, who clamped one about his own face, one on Boltfoot.
‘Come, Father,’ Andrew said. ‘Follow me.’
For hours they fought the blaze, bringing pail after pail of water to douse the flames. Men, women and children from a mile around left their beds to watch the flames light up the night sky or to help. Jane stayed with the children at the house of a neighbour, while Shakespeare, Andrew and Boltfoot joined the local watch and scores of other men ferrying water from the river. It was hot, brutal work that left skin scorched, faces striped with soot and sweat, and hair singed.
At last, soon after dawn, the worst of the fire was out. But what was left was no more than half a house, the remainder just a black carcass of smoking timbers. They had lost important belongings, but they had protected neighbouring properties. For Shakespeare the worst loss was the few jewels and small trinkets of his late wife, Catherine; for Andrew, it was the destruction of a painting of his long-dead mother.