our part of the country on what was called her summer progress. As mayor of our town and Arden kin, Will’s father took him to see her grand entry into Kenilworth Castle, the country seat of Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, Her Majesty’s longtime favorite.
Kenilworth lay fifteen miles from Stratford, so I never would have been able to go on my own, though I vowed to my father I’d run away if he didn’t take me. But, God be praised, all pack trains in the area were hired to bring in supplies for the queen’s visit. After much cajoling and pleading, I was allowed to accompany my father and his men. Poor Kat, my best friend, sobbed and sobbed at not being able to go, but I vowed I’d describe every royal detail, down to the rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. Will’s father also took Will’s friend Dick Field, but my father said one wench was enough to watch with all the carters and carriers about.
Everyone knew that the earl—’twas said the queen always called him Robin—would like to seduce or coerce Her Majesty to wed him. But ever since his wife had died under mysterious circumstances, which threatened both Leicester’s and Elizabeth’s reputations, she had managed to keep him in his place while still enjoying his good company. The earl had planned a fine supper for her vast train of courtiers under a big tent at Long Itchington. After what Will called their “al fresco repast,” Leicester would escort Her Majesty seven miles to his castle for a visit to last at least a fortnight.
When my father and his men—he had four laborers now and a dozen horses for his own pack train—finished delivering their last load of victuals to the castle, he left the animals guarded by two men and found us a place along the road where the queen would pass before entering the huge, redbrick edifice of the castle.
I noted well the whispers from the crowd as we waited, pressed in together like cod in brine: “Leicester wouldn’t have this grand place to entertain her if she hadn’t given it to him—and his title . . . His family’s full of upstarts . . . Maybe murdered his wife so he could court the queen . . . Leicester’s father a traitor . . . beheaded . . . rumors afoot that the Catholics in the area will turn their backs on the queen or try to do away with Leicester, her watchdog here’bouts . . .”
All I knew was I’d never seen the likes of Kenilworth Castle. Massive, with many fine towers guarding its stalwart flanks and rows of banners fluttering from its ramparts, it sprawled between a spring-fed lake and a vast hunt park full of deer. On the lake, I saw a man-made floating island, which, ’twas whispered, was to be part of the queen’s welcome. If I squinted, I could see a woman on the wooden platform, gowned in white silk, her hair golden in the sinking sun. Oh, if that could only be my place in this vast, shoving array of folk, for I could barely see from here. Lord Leicester had ordered an arched bridge built over the water for a special entry, and I had to get close to that to be sure I could espy that lady all in white greet Her Majesty.
And then I spotted Will, or rather his father, who had already uncapped. The bald spot on the back of John Shakespeare’s head shone in the sun. They stood not far from us, but closer to the road in the second row behind the many local men of import in their blue velvet Leicester tunics embossed with the chained-bear symbol of his coat-of-arms.
“Can I edge closer?” I asked my father. “I won’t go far.”
“All right, but don’t lose sight of me,” he ordered, craning to look down the road in the direction from which the procession would come.
I didn’t tell him it was the Shakespeares I saw, for between the Greenaways and my father, Silas, there was bad blood. Despite being offered more money to stay with the Shakespeare-supported carriers, my father had formed his own company and, by underpricing the Greenaways, was off to a sound start. Will and I never broached the subject, but so we wouldn’t be seen together, we now met under Clopton Bridge to take our rare walks. When our companions, Dick and Kat, went out