Free Kissing Shakespeare by Pamela Mingle Page A

he could hear every word I was about to say. “I know I’ve been hesitant about saving Shakespeare. But after this, I’m in. You can count on me to do whatever it takes.”
    He pressed his mouth to my ear. “Thank you, Olivia. You will not be sorry.”
    I’d have to take a wait-and-see attitude on that.

A FTER WHAT WE’D WITNESSED IN TOWN , the mood at Hoghton Tower was grim. When Alexander told his wife the news, her manner remained calm, but the serene expression in her eyes changed to wariness, and maybe fear, I thought. Conversation at supper was subdued. Thomas, who had mysteriously reappeared at the side of the road on our way home, was not present. The rest of us picked at our food, and I was relieved when the master and mistress stood, marking the end of the meal.
    I hurried upstairs to my room and threw myself on my bed. My limbs felt heavy and rigid. Despite my determined effort to block them out, visions of the prisoner tormented me. I heard his screams, saw his tortured body, and stared once again into his hopeless eyes. After a while I must have dozed off. A hand on my shoulder and a voice whispering my name awakened me.
    I twisted my head around. “See what I mean about the lack of privacy?”
    “Are you unwell?” Stephen asked from his perch on the side of my bed.
    “How could I not be? I watched a man burn to death today!”
    “I am full of sorrow for you, that you had to see something so monstrous.”
    When I didn’t respond, Stephen squeezed my hand. “Olivia?”
    I rolled over onto my back. “Stephen, I’m scared to death! What could anyone have done to deserve such a horrifying end?”
    With a sigh, he released my hand. “Nothing. Nothing at all.” For a moment, he studied my face, and I forced myself to look right back.
    “The time has come for you to know more. I had hoped that the religious discord wouldn’t involve you, but I see now that was foolish of me.”
    “So start explaining,” I said, scooting into a sitting position. I needed to look into Stephen’s eyes. I wanted to know how much truth he was telling me.
    “Since the pope excommunicated the queen, matters have become worse for Catholics.”
    “When was that?”
    He waved his hand through the air. “I don’t remember exactly. Sometime in the 1570s. For keeping or sheltering priests, as the Hoghtons and many others are doing, there are fines, even imprisonment. People suffer the same consequences for recusancy.”
    “I don’t know what that means.”
    “Recusancy? Not attending Protestant services.”
    “Do your aunt and uncle attend?”
    “For a time, they did. In recent months they have given it up as hypocritical. That is what our families quarreled about.”
    “Your family does attend, even though they’re Catholic?”
    “My father feels it is the safest course. They go to Protestant services, and when there’s a priest about the neighborhood, they come home and hear Mass.”
    I nodded. “Okay. Go on.”
    “For the priests themselves … some have been tortured and executed, as you witnessed today. Especially the Jesuit missionaries.”
    I shuddered involuntarily. “That poor man—do you think he was a Jesuit?”
    “The sheriff said as much, and it is they the Privy Council are after. Especially a priest named Edmund Campion.”
    “I’ve never heard of him. Why are they afraid of him in particular?”
    “Campion is a brilliant thinker, a natural leader. He is much loved by the people, even Protestants. Wherever he goes, Catholics arrive in droves to say their confessions to him and hear him preach.”
    “Thomas disappeared before the burning. What was that about?”
    “I do not know for certain, but I think Master Cook is our Jesuit priest. He dared not linger, in case the prisoner recognized him. When Thomas met us along the road, his face was pale and he said not a word.”
    “So he’s not an Oxford professor after all.”
    “He was probably educated at Oxford, as were many of the priests