said the Lord’s Prayer. As always, he said the words by rote, but today he laid emphasis on lead us not into temptation. He was twenty-eight; time to be married. These feelings—urges—were too powerful and needed an outlet other than those to be found in the comfort of a single man’s bed.
At first light, his man, Boltfoot, was waiting for him in the paneled anteroom of the ancient house. He was talking with Jane but she scurried away to the kitchen as soon as Shakespeare entered. Shakespeare frowned; surely there was nothing between them? He shook his head dismissively. No, a young woman like Jane would never see anything in a grizzled former mariner with a clubfoot.
The building that John Shakespeare called home was a handsome four-story wood-frame house which had creaked and moved and bent sideways with the passing of the years. At times Shakespeare wondered whether it might fall about his ears, but it had lasted two centuries thus far and was conveniently close to Mr. Secretary Walsingham’s fine city house in Seething Lane. Though not large, it served as office and home for Shakespeare.
“Is Slide here?”
“Two men, Mr. Shakespeare,” Boltfoot said. “Slide and a constable.”
“I’ll see Slide.”
Boltfoot Cooper was like an old oak, thought Shakespeare, the sinews and raised veins of his face weathered and rutted like bark. He watched his servant as he turned toward the door, his body short and squat, his left foot heavy and dragging, as it had been since birth. He was in his early thirties or so he believed; his mother had died of childbed fever and his father could never recall the year or month of his son’s birth to tell him. Somewhere around 1554 seemed most likely.
“Wait. What does the constable want?”
Boltfoot stopped. “Says there has been a murder.” His voice, brusque and deepened by years of salt air in his time as a ship’s cooper, revealed him to be from Devon.
“Just that? A murder? Why come to me? Why not fetch the justice or the tipstaff?” There was an unmistakeable edge of irritation in Shakespeare’s words. At times these days he felt as if he would seize up like rusted iron, that the pressure of responsibility laid on him by Walsingham was simply too great for one man.
“Says the woman killed looks highborn,” Boltfoot replied. “Soft hands. Says there are papers and strange letters and the house where she was found was burned down. He’s scared.”
Shakespeare sighed in resignation. “Tell him to wait while I see Slide.”
Harry Slide bowed low as he entered the antechamber, sweeping his sable-edged cape aside with extravagance, and then, as he rose, extending his fingers like the neck of a swan.
“All right, Slide. You’re not at court now.”
“But I am in the presence of greatness, am I not? The magnificent Mr. John Shakespeare. I have a hundred marks says you will be a minister of the Crown before too long.”
“If you had a hundred marks, Harry, I doubt you would be here.”
Shakespeare eyed Slide’s glittering clothes, his taut collar and stiff doublet with gold and black slashes in the Spanish style. With such expensive tastes, it was hardly surprising he was always impoverished. “So, what can you offer me?”
“I hear everything, as you know, Mr. Shakespeare. Today I heard that the Archbishop of Canterbury was caught in the vestry on Sunday last with his cassock around his waist swiving a member of his flock.”
Shakespeare raised a disapproving eyebrow. Such irreverence could cost a man his life or, at the very least, his ears.
“Nothing very strange about that, you might think,” Slide continued. “But the next day he had her for dinner with carrots and some garden mint.”
Shakespeare couldn’t help laughing out loud.
“At least she was a ewe, not a ram, so I suppose that’s all right. Isn’t it?” Slide said. “I’m afraid I am not sure of the teaching on such matters in the new church.”
Shakespeare laughed again. He was grateful to Slide for lightening his mood. There had been much darkness lately—plots against Her Majesty, a pending death sentence hanging over Mary, Queen of Scots. “You will get yourself hanged if you do not take care, Harry Slide.”
“Perhaps. But for the present, could I interest you in the whereabouts of two priests of the Society of Jesus …”
Shakespeare suddenly paid attention. “Two Jesuits? Garnet and Southwell?”
“The same.”
“Well, yes, of course, that would be a big catch. Do you have them?”