John Shakespeare (older brother to William) is an
investigator who reports directly to Sir Francis
Walsingham, Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth. When
Blanche Howard, a young cousin of the queen, is found
brutally murdered, with papers nearby that contain libelous
statements and threats against Elizabeth, Shakespeare must
move quickly, but discreetly. All the while, his bitter
rival, Richard Topcliffe, dogs his every move. In addition,
Walsingham has another assignment for his top man: find an
assassin sent to kill Sir Francis Drake, who seems to have
nearly as many enemies as the queen.
As Shakespeare undertakes the exhausting task of
investigating both cases, he begins to find disturbing
information. Could the murder of Lady Blanche be connected
to the assassination plot? In a Great Britain divided
between the new Church of England and the Catholic faith,
steeped in conspiracies and accusations, Shakespeare must
rely on his keen intelligence and a network of loyal
associates to sort the truth from the lies and prevent a
murder that would have international repercussions.
This complex mystery offers a detailed and unromanticized
look at Elizabethan England. This gritty, often violent
tale features fanatics and unsavory characters on both
sides of the religious and political struggles, bringing a
wealth of historical facts and characters to vivid life.
There was actually a bit too much historical detail for my
personal taste, and sometimes it made the narration and
dialogue seem a bit stilted. I also thought there were a
few too many characters and some random point-of-view
moments that were distracting. A little more humor would
have been good to balance out the overall seriousness,
particularly for Shakespeare himself. I never quite warmed
up to him. However, he is a compelling character and I
think fans of historical fiction will really enjoy this
well-researched story. This is a promising beginning for a
new series, especially for readers interested in this
volatile time period in English history.
In a burnt-out house, one of Queen Elizabeth’s aristocratic
cousins is found murdered, her flesh marked with profane
symbols. At the same time a plot is discovered to
assassinate England’s feared sea warrior Sir Francis Drake –
a plot which, if successful, could leave the country open to
Spanish invasion.
The year is 1587. One man is charged with the desperate task
of solving both cases: John Shakespeare, chief intelligencer
in Sir Francis Walsingam’s spy network. With the Spanish
Armada poised to strike, Mary Queen of Scots awaiting
execution and the pikes above London Bridge decorated with
the severed heads of traitors, the country is in peril of
being overwhelmed by fear, chaos and religious strife.
Following a trail of illicit passions and family secrets,
Shakespeare travels through a teeming underworld of enemy
agents, sorcerers, whores and poets, among whom is his own
younger brother, the struggling playmaker Will.
Gradually unravelling a complex conspiracy of international
intrigue – and shadowed at every turn by his deadly rival,
the Queen’s brutal torturer Richard Topcliffe – John
Shakespeare soon realises his own family and the beautiful
woman he desires are in grave danger of becoming the next
martyrs to a passion for murder.
Excerpt
John Shakespeare looked around the gloomy shell of the
house. It was remarkably intact, given the ferocity of the
fire described by the constable. Something caught his eye
on the sodden floor. He picked it up. It was a paper, wet
and unreadable. Then he saw that there were more papers
lying around amongst the burnt stubble of thatching.
Some of the papers had distinguishable words and all of
them were unfolded, which almost certainly meant they were
new printed. He signalled to Boltfoot Cooper. ‘Gather them
all up.’
There were other things, too: type sorts for printing. But
no sign of a press.
‘All of it, Boltfoot, the type sorts, too. I will examine
it all later. Perhaps we can find the letter foundry where
it was made. Now, Mr Stocker, where is the body?’
Above them the roof was burnt away and the sky hung a
brilliant grey where the ceiling should have been. A few
flutterings of snow began to drift down.
The staircase was intact, though charred, and they ascended
it to the second floor, where in a chamber at the front,
they found a woman’s corpse, naked and bloody, stretched
obscenely on a large oaken and canopied bed. A kite was
pecking at her eyes but flew up through the blackened
purlins and rafters as they approached. The bellman gripped
his hat in his hands as if he would wring it dry, and
averted his gaze. Shakespeare understood why he would wish
to do so and why the constable had seemed so shaken
On the first floor of a broad tenement house in Cow Lane
near Smith Field, Gilbert Cogg was sweating profusely, which
had less to do with the heat from the fire and more to do
with his three-hundredweight girth and his exertions with a
girl named Starling Day.
She had come to the door of his workshop asking for
employment in his bawdy house. He told her he would not
employ her without sampling what she had to offer, and said
she could have sixpence and a tankard of ale. She asked for
a shilling. After a brief bout of bargaining, they had
agreed on tenpence. She had earned her money well, half
crushed to death beneath his prodigious weight. His enormous
bed had threatened to break its boards and joists and
collapse through to the ground floor.
But it survived, as did Starling Day. Now they lay together
on the dirt-grey sheet. Cogg was panting as if he would
soon breathe his last. His belly and chest heaved and sank
like a ducking stool. Starling rolled over and slid out of
bed. She was thin from lack of nourishment: she had walked
from Nottingham to escape a marriage in which she had been
beaten one too many times. Though the ribs in her chest
looked like a washboard, her bruises had faded and she was
still womanly. She would have been pretty, had she had the
opportunity to take more care of her hair. She dressed
quickly, watching Cogg as his breathing subsided. At last
she held out a hand to him.
‘What would that be, then, my pretty bird? Sixpence, I do
believe?’
‘Tenpence, Mr Cogg. You did agree tenpence.’
‘Did I now? Did I so?’
‘You did, sir.’
With difficulty he shifted himself upright off the bed. His
belly hung low like a sack of turnips. He pushed his
stomach forward with evident satisfaction and gave it a
hearty slap. ‘You don’t get a belly like that without some
hard eating and drinking, my girl.’
‘No, Mr Cogg.’
‘It’s living so near the shambles, little Starling, that’s
what does it. The slaughtermen and butchers bring me offal
and offcuts and in return I helps them with little things.
Money for the rentman, pretty favors from friends like you.
You name it, Cogg provides it. I provides fine favors for
gentlemen, too, so those as works for me never knows who
they might meet. You want fine sotweed? Cogg can get it.
You want a prime view of a hanging, drawing and quartering?
Cogg provides.’
‘I had heard you were a generous man, Mr Cogg, I was told
you might be able to give me work.’
‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we. You’re new to Romeville,
my girl, but you’ve already got some nice Boleynish tricks
there. I reckon you could do with some feeding up, though.
So I tell you what, I’ll give you a whole shilling this
time so you can buy yourself some pies and perhaps you’ll
come to me again on the morrow and we’ll see what we can do.’
They were moving on a broad curve northwards, close to the
tidal sands of Pig’s Bay near Shoebury Ness. The
Elizabeth Bonaventure had been Drake’s flagship
sixteen months earlier on his Caribbean raid. She was
already a quarter of a century old on that voyage, but John
Hawkins had streamlined her and made a new ship of her.
Sleek, fast, like a wisp in the wind, she was a Spanish
galleon commander’s nightmare.
At last a boy at the top of the mainmast called, ‘Hulk
ahoy’. And soon they saw it, a weathered old vessel stuck
fast in the sand with nothing left but its hull and a broken
skeleton of spars and masts, dating back to the turn of the
century or before.
‘We will take six turns, master gunner. First turn long
range, five hundred yards,’ Drake announced. The master
gunner, a short, broad-shouldered man of thirty, bowed to
his vice-admiral and went straightway to the gun-deck where
he began issuing orders.
As they came around for the first turn and as the great
cannons boomed and recoiled on their four-wheeled
carriages, the smoke of gunpowder choked out the sun, like a
crackling bonfire of greenwood in autumn. Boltfoot Cooper
kept his eyes on Drake and remembered the long days of the
cirumnavigation in the great oceans with a curious
nostalgia he had thought never to feel again.
In his mind’s eye, he could see the vastness of the open
sea, when you knew there was a God in Heaven and that He
was very close. On a clear day, the ocean was a glory to
behold. The rolling waves, higher than the bowsprit of the
Golden Hind, reaching as far as a man could see,
north, south, east and west; immense in their splendour. As
the Hind had descended from one wave into a long,
dipping trough, the next wave came up like a tall, grey
cathedral before them and the ship rose to meet it, before
falling once more down a wall of water into an enormous,
foam-wracked trough. Such days had terrified many mariners,
but Boltfoot had loved them; he had forgotten how much.
‘Regrets, Cooper?’ Drake bellowed, just after the second
boom of the Elizabeth Bonaventure’s guns, as if he
reading Boltfoot’s mind.
Yes, that you cheated me out of my plunder,
Boltfoot thought, but said nothing.
Herrick, in his room above the chandlery on the Strand at
Deptford, had been awake and watchful since first light. He
had seen the Elizabeth Bonaventure from some way
off. She was every inch a royal ship, proudly bearing flags
with the cross of St George and silken pennants of gold and
silver, flying thirty yards or more from the masts. And
then, as she came closer, he could see the rose shield of
the Tudors adorning the low race-built forecastle – the
same diminutive structure that made the ship so vulnerable
to boarding yet, at the same time, as nimble and quick as a
wild cat.
For a moment, Herrick found himself admiring her lines. She
was majestic and it occurred to him that if the English had
many more such ships, they could trouble, if not match, any
armada that Philip could muster and put to sea. He resolved
that when this Holy mission was done with, he would go to
Mendoza in Paris with information on what he had seen here.
His Spanish masters should know the truth about this English
fleet.
From the bag he took the two pieces of gun; the mechanism
and the barrel in one piece, the stock separate. They
clipped together easily. He primed the weapon with the fine
willow powder and rammed home one of the balls into the
muzzle. It fitted perfectly. Herrick removed his sighting
stand from below the bed. It was short, no more than two
feet. He had crafted it himself from wood he had found
discarded outside the dockyard timber merchant’s lot nearby.
At its top was a notch, on which he could rest the muzzle.
He opened the little window and looked out. Beneath him the
early-morning throng was going about its business. No one
looked up. Herrick took his pillow cushion from the bed and
put it on the floor close by the window, where he placed it
beneath one knee, crouching low so that his head would not
be visible from the street below. He had a clear, unimpeded
view of the landing steps where Drake would soon land.
He could see the cockboat now, rowed hard and in time by
four oarsmen. The coxswain stood, directing their strokes.
In the back, the captain sat in splendour, talking to a
dark-skinned man to his left. On the other side of him sat a
thickset man who looked for all the world like a broadsheet
version of a pirate.
The cockboat was about two hundred yards away. Herrick
rested the barrel of his snaphaunce musket on the makeshift
stand, its muzzle protruding not more than an inch over the
sill of the window.
He knew it to be a remarkable weapon. He could easily hit a
man’s head from a hundred yards, probably one-fifty, and
possibly even two hundred. Herrick lined up the sights and
squinted down the barrel at Drake. He could take him now.
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