*****FANS OF THE EXPLOSIVE BBC TV SERIES 'GUNPOWDER' STARRING KIT HARRINGTON will love the bestselling John Shakespeare series of Tudor spy thrillers from Rory Clements, winner of the Ellis Peters Historical Fiction Award***** '[Clements] does for Elizabeth's reign what CJ Sansom does for Henry VIII's' Sunday Times ********** When a reluctant John Shakespeare answers a plea for help from Joshua Peace, Searcher of the Dead, a few days before Christmas, he cannot know what lies ahead. A naked man has been found in a snowdrift, a wreath of holly crowning his head and a bullet in his back. But it is no ordinary corpse. Shakespeare recognises him as Giovanni Jesu, a black man from Venice, a close associate - and some say much more - of the disgraced Earl of Oxford. Who would kill such a man and why? As all around him prepare for the festive season, Shakespeare must unravel a complex plot of passion and treachery and confront a cold-blooded murderer who will not hesitate to kill again.
Release date:
November 29, 2012
Publisher:
Hodder & Stoughton
Print pages:
112
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John Shakespeare sat at his table, huddled into his padded doublet. Behind him, the fire in the hearth crackled and roared but could not compete with the cold air that blasted in off the river and howled through the gaps in the leaded windows. A wind as cold as death. He dipped his quill into the horn and wondered briefly whether, even here indoors, it were possible for ink to freeze solid.
He had been putting off writing this letter. With Christmas only two days away, he could delay no longer.
His parents would prefer his presence, of course, but there was no hope of that this year. Threats to the safety of the realm were multiplying. As Sir Robert Cecil’s chief intelligencer he could not leave his post even on holy days. And then there was this weather: thick snow carpeted the land so that travelling any distance was impossible. Even the best riders would not manage the hundred-mile highway to Stratford-upon-Avon in such conditions. A letter would have to suffice and the courier would have to deliver it as and when he could.
Sitting back from the table, he looked at what he had written: news of the girls, Mary and Grace, both thriving in health and their lessons. He was about to move on to his adopted son, Andrew, when there was a knock at the door and Boltfoot Cooper limped into the room, his club-foot scraping across the rush-matted boards.
‘Mr Peace is here to see you, master.’
Peace? A visit from Joshua Peace was a rare event indeed. Rare, but most welcome. ‘Bring him in, Boltfoot, and ask Jane to fetch us brandy, if you would.’
He put down his quill and rubbed the wet ink from his hands on the rag he kept at the side of the table as Boltfoot ushered Peace in.
‘Well met, Joshua. Are you hail?’ Shakespeare took his old friend’s icy hand, then embraced him, struck by how gaunt and ill at ease he appeared.
‘As well as any of God’s creatures in this bleakest of winters, John. I swear the cold would freeze a man’s very soul.’
‘Well, take brandy with me. You will find some warmth there.’
Peace managed a faint smile. ‘Brandy indeed. Yes, that is what a man needs. If not to warm him, then at least to numb the pain in the long, dark nights.’
‘So have you come to cheer me up, to drink and make merry? Are we to go wassailing?’
‘You make jest of me.’ Peace took off his ice-coated felt hat and ran his hand across the smooth peak of his pate. His hair was nothing but a rim around the edges, a pauper’s crown. ‘Forgive me. It is getting to me.’
‘Then I shall have to cheer you. Let us trudge through the snow to the Old Swan and sink into mellow oblivion together.’
‘No, John. I have no temper for the company of strangers. Let them carouse without me. Work and sleep are my lot this season.’
Shakespeare’s maidservant, Jane, appeared with a salver holding a flagon of brandy and two goblets. He poured two large measures of the spirit and handed one to Peace.
‘Then what has brought you here?’
‘I have care of a corpse that I wish you to look at. In truth I am at a loss as to what to do with it.’
‘Is there foul play?’
‘Most certainly. The man has been shot in the back.’
‘Then it must be a matter for the justice and the sheriff.’
‘They are not interested.’
‘The justice is not interested in murder? In God’s name, why not?’
‘The victim is an Ethiop. They presume him to be either slave or deckhand from some foreign vessel. No one cares enough to inquire into his death. Anyway, they are all too preoccupied with the prospect of feasting.’
Shakespeare wished he were surprised by the reaction, but nonetheless murder was murder, whoever the victim. ‘How did he come to be entrusted to you?’
‘The watch brought him to me. They had no idea what to do with the body and said they did not want to bury a heathen in hallowed ground.’
‘A shameful business.’
‘Indeed it is. One of those who brought him to me suggested he was shot escaping, another that he hadn’t paid some quent merchant for use of his whore. Either way, they said, he had got his deserts.’
‘Drink your brandy, Joshua, and we will see.’
The stone walls of the crypt beneath St Paul’s dripped with water. The cacophonous sounds of teeming commerce above were muted here. This was where Joshua Peace worked alone as Searcher of the Dead.
Shakespeare was a tall man and his long hair hung about his face as he stared down at the mound on the trestle table. It was covered in a stained sheet that had once been white. Peace pulled back the covering to reveal the corpse, which lay face down, showing the wound.
Even in death, the skin had a wonderful, dark sheen, its beauty cruelly marred by a hole in the middle of the back, just beneath the delicate arc of the shoulder blades.
‘Could his death have been an accident?’ Shakespeare asked.
‘Look more closely, John. See the scorch marks around the entry wound. That tells me he was shot at close range. Most likely with a dag. This was murder.’
‘A dag?’ It was not that easy to get hold of a wheel-lock pistol. Such weapons were costly. Shakespeare sniffed the air. ‘How long has he been dead?’
‘You notice the absence of stench.’
‘Which must mean the death is recent.’
‘No, not in this case. The body was found beneath a drift of snow, somewhere close to Bishopsgate, just outside the city wall. It had frozen solid. The bitter cold has delayed putrefaction. In truth, I cannot give you a time of death, except to say that it occurred some time in the past three weeks, since the snows came.’
Shakespeare reached forward and touched the skin. It was s. . .
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