Martyr by Rory Clements Page A

earth to do, not promenading around London with your caliver and cutlass like some landbound pirate!
    And you’re a common thief, Mr. Drake.
    Drake took his arm from around Boltfoot’s shoulder and pushed him in the chest. His face had turned to ice. I’ve killed men for less, Cooper.
    Boltfoot stood his ground. You were not the only man to journey around the world, Mr. Drake. I was there with you near death from ship’s fever, hunger, and the bloody flux. Where is my share of the treasure?
    Why, Mr. Cooper, you have had gold.
    Enough to keep me from starving, maybe, Mr. Drake. You feed us a pension in dribs and drabs as it pleases you, and you turn us into beggars for what is rightfully ours. Where are the riches you promised us?
    I will hear none of this. Mr. Shakespeare, please remove your man.
    Boltfoot was not so easily silenced. Rarely had Shakespeare heard him say more than a dozen words together at a time, and now he was in full flow. Do you not recall that gold Will Legge and I found in the chest of the master’s cabin aboard the Capitana and gave to you? Six and a half pounds that you had not seen. You cut us a wedge twenty-nine ounces and marked it with our names and pledged it to us when we reached England. Where, then, is that gold now, Mr. Drake? Will and I have seen none of it.
    Drake was near foaming with anger. God’s faith! You are the vilest knave that ever lived, Boltfoot Cooper. I tell you, you and all the men have had your share and more. Did I not write your names in glory?
    Shakespeare decided it was time to intervene. Sir Francis, if I may speak with you a while in private—
    I’ll run you through, Cooper, you base scoundrel—
    A brief word or two, Sir Francis?
    Drake snapped out of his tirade and turned toward Shakespeare. Get me away from the company of this monstrous, dissembling, perfidious, lame bilge-scum of a man. Come, Mr. Shakespeare, Mr. Stanley, let us adjourn and take some wine. Diego, you stay with Cooper. He nodded briefly toward his wife. M’lady …
    Drake strode ahead of them into the adjoining room, the slight limp he carried from a leg wound sustained in his raid on a Spanish mule train at Nombre de Dios still evident fourteen years later. The three men sat at a table and Drake hammered it with his fist. The Queen will not hear me. She affects to despise me for the lack of pearls, gold, and emeralds brought her from the Spanish Main this last year, but she knows I wreaked terrible harm to the Spanish King. And if she’d give me the commission of ships I need, I would go and sink this king and his enterprise forever.
    Sir Francis …
    I know, I know, Mr. Shakespeare, you have something to say. But hear me out. I am the one man in England who can save this Queen and this realm from the foul Antichrist of Rome and his Spanish toy dog …
    That, Sir Francis, is why I am here. Shakespeare knew as well as any the boastfulness of Drake. It was common knowledge in England and throughout Europe, and those who did not fear him and admire him sneered at him for it.
    And yet he had much to be boastful about. Some said the total plunder taken on his three-year round-the-world voyage amounted to five hundred thousand pounds. Much went to the Queen and her treasury, yet Drake himself was left one of the wealthiest men in the realm.
    He had won it through courage and cunning and remarkable attention to detail. However distant the sea, he never allowed his ships to fall into disrepair. Despite hunger and illness, he would drive his vessels ashore to be careened—clearing the hulls of barnacles and weed—so that they remained trim and swift and strong.
    Never did he shy away from a fight—either with the Spaniards or native peoples. Yet neither did he kill unnecessarily. When he took prisoners, he treated them with courtesy and mercy—a thing rarely true of the Spanish.
    Back home, he had for many years been the star in the Queen’s firmament, always welcome in her presence with his