Текст книги "The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez"

Автор книги: Ann Swinfen

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I noticed then – I had been too preoccupied with the child to notice before – that he was looking tired. More than that, he seemed exhausted. My absence working for Phelippes, particularly the long hours of late, had thrown a much greater burden on him. I think that was the first time I fully realised that my father was growing old. He had been past forty when I was born, so now he was nearing sixty, and what he had endured at the hands of the Inquisition had surely shortened his life.

In the days that followed I tried to take over more and more of his work, to spare him, and I urged upon Joan the necessity of feeding him well. Between us we contrived to ensure that he ate two good meals of meat a day, and he began to look a little less worn.

However much I would have liked to spend more time relieving my father of some of his burden of work, Phelippes still needed me. When Dr Stevens returned to the hospital he required a cane to lean upon, but at least he was able to resume the care of most of his patients. Once again I was working at St Bartholomew’s in the mornings and spending the afternoons at Seething Lane. Phelippes was troubled by the fact that the conspiracy headed in England by Sir Anthony Babington was not progressing in the way he expected. Sir Anthony, it seemed, was developing cold feet. Despite the fact that he was a married man with a young child, he was expressing a wish to travel abroad.

‘In order to widened his education, he says!’ Phelippes was contemptuous. ‘He is four and twenty. If he had wanted to travel in Europe and see the sights of ancient Rome, he should have gone five or six years ago, at the age when most young gentlemen travel. Rome! I know where he will be headed in Rome. Straight to that hotbed of treason, the college for English priests. And he has the effrontery to ask Sir Francis for a licence to travel abroad for three years!’

‘It does seem strange,’ I said cautiously. ‘Not long married, and with a baby. He would leave his wife and child in England?’

‘Of course. He could hardly pursue his education with a woman and child tagging at his heels.’ Phelippes’s voice was sour with sarcasm.

‘But,’ I said, not quite sure why Phelippes was so heated, ‘will this not mean the Queen will be safe and the threat of an invasion will be over?’

He gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Have you learned nothing, Kit? We want this conspiracy to go forward. For once we have all the threads in our hands. We know the principal players and their strengths and weaknesses. We know where the money is coming from. We know which ports they will attempt to use during an invasion and have installed covert forces there to withstand them. We are intercepting every letter in and out of Chartley, every communication with the Scottish queen, as you very well know. Up to now she has been very careful with what she, or her secretaries, put on paper, but with every week that passes, they become a little more confident, a little more careless. It is unlikely that we will ever again be in a position to have everything under our control as we have now. Of course we want the conspiracy to go forward!’

Under this blast of reasoning, I bowed my head. I had never seen the quiet and prudent Thomas Phelippes so passionate, but I understood that if all his work of the last months were to fall apart, he had some reason for passion.

He had been prowling about the room as he lectured me, but now he sat down abruptly at his desk.

‘And I will tell you something even more ironic, Kit. For a short time Sir Francis even believed he could turn Babington, persuade him to work for us. I managed to put a stop to that idea.’

‘A double agent?’ I said weakly. I was having difficulty keeping up with all this, for I had not been aware of some of the details of the conspiracy Phelippes had been listing.

‘Aye, if you like. A double agent. But it would have been much too risky. Babington is genuinely a devout Catholic, not like Gifford, who comes from an old Catholic family but does not have a scrap of religious faith in his bones. Moreover, Babington has a puppy-like devotion to the Scots queen. He was a page in Shrewsbury’s household when Shrewsbury was her guardian, and he saw her as a maiden in distress, like some damsel locked away in a tower in a tale of chivalry and knightly prowess! The truth is, she is a scheming harpy with her eye on the English throne, now that the French and the Scots have thrown her out. And her enormous household has been eating up the Queen’s substance for years. Maiden in distress!’ He snorted in contempt.

‘So what is to be done?’ I asked hesitantly. I was not sure whether Phelippes was using me merely to work off his fury, or whether there was some other purpose behind all this.

‘In the first place, we have told Poley to lead him by the nose for the moment. Keep him corresponding with the Scottish woman, but also keep the door to Walsingham open a crack. The latest plan is for Babington’s band of heroes to attack Chartley and free Mary, while a group of assassins, including Savage, attack and murder the Queen. At the same time the invaders will land and march on London, unimpeded by any English army, because, of course, we know nothing about all this. If a nervous Babington thinks he can always back out at the last minute and reveal all to Walsingham, then he is more likely to carry on with his hare-brained schemes.’

‘I see. And Sir Francis’s purpose in all this is?’

‘The purpose is to trap Mary when she admits she is a party to this. She has been a party to other conspiracies, but she has been clever enough to conceal the evidence. This time, she is on the brink of revealing herself. Then, under the Instrument of Association, which she has signed, and the Act for the Queen’s Surety, she is guilty of treason.’

‘I see,’ I said again, and this time I did see. So this was what Walsingham and Phelippes were working for, what all this web of intrigue and observation was intended to entrap. By watching every move, but waiting and not showing their hand, they hoped that Mary would drop her guard.

‘Are there any letters to decipher today, Master Phelippes? Because if not . . .’

‘No, Sir Francis wants to see you. He should be back from Whitehall Palace by now. Come with me and we will see whether he is in his office.’

Sir Francis must just have arrived, for he was standing and sorting through the papers on his desk.

‘Ah, come in, Thomas, Kit. Have you explained to him yet, Thomas?’

‘No, Sir Francis. I thought you wished to do so yourself.’

‘Very well. Sit down, both of you.’ He settled himself behind his desk.

‘Kit, we have both been very pleased with the work you have done here. You also managed the business at Hartwell Hall admirably. As far as we can tell, your sudden departure aroused no suspicions and you enabled us to take control of another courier route.’

I inclined my head. I was not sure where this was leading, but I dreaded that it might be a preliminary to sending me on another mission like the one to the Fitzgeralds. I had managed the deception once, for just a week. I did not think I could do it again.

‘As I am sure you must have become aware, Thomas and I have to work with some very disreputable and unreliable people – liars, traitors, double agents. You have convinced us of your decency and honesty. Moreover, you have your own thoroughly respectable profession of medicine, unlike the many layabouts we are forced to employ.’

He fixed me with a shrewd gaze.

‘I can see you are looking apprehensive. Please do not think that I am going to ask you to give up being a physician and become an informant! What I would like to do is to use you from time to time, when an impeccably honest face will serve the Queen and the country better than half a dozen slippery men. Like Poley.’

He smiled. Clearly he knew my aversion to the man.

‘Thomas will be riding down to Sussex in two days’ time,’ he said, ‘to the port of Rye. We have received information that an attempt will be made to smuggle two more so-called priests into the country through Sussex sometime next week. Probably not through Rye itself – it is too well guarded by our customs men and searchers. It is more likely that they will choose some small port nearby, one of the fishing villages that lie along the coast there. It is an easy matter for a fishing boat to slip across the Channel to Dieppe or Calais, then sail innocently back into its home port with unwelcome visitors hidden amongst the barrels of fish.’

A sudden flash of memory seized me. I too had once hidden in the bottom of a fishing boat.

‘Once we have picked up the trail,’ Phelippes said, ‘we will either follow them or arrest them, as seems best at the time.’

‘I want you to go with Thomas,’ Sir Francis said. ‘It is time you learned more of our work and this will give you the opportunity.’

I opened my mouth to protest that I was not an agent in Sir Francis’s service. That it had never been my intention even to be a code-breaker. That I did not want to become more embroiled in this murky world than I was already.

Then I closed my mouth again. A sudden and unexpected surge of excitement set my heart beating faster. I smiled at Sir Francis. ‘In two days, did you say?’

Chapter Eleven

Our progress down to Sussex was neither secret nor unobtrusive. Phelippes knew very well how much he was hated by those bent on treason and although he was confident that he had certain knowledge of most of the traitors in the country, even he could not know them all. Moreover, they were a slippery lot. Even Walsingham’s own agents, like Gifford, had a habit of disappearing, sometimes for weeks at a time.

‘A few weeks ago,’ Phelippes said to me as we rode south together, ‘we needed to send Gilbert Gifford on a mission to France, to reassure the conspirators there, especially Thomas Morgan, that he was still acting for them. While he was away, we were obliged to employ another man as courier in his place, without telling him that he was, in fact, acting for Sir Francis. This meant using a very roundabout and difficult way of intercepting the letters and passing them on, to prevent his realising this. Gifford recommended a cousin of his, Thomas Barnes, a known Catholic who would be accepted by Mary’s party.’

I had heard mention of Barnes, but I had paid little attention, as it did not seem to concern me.

‘Barnes has disappeared,’ Phelippes said. ‘Gifford could not find him. We could not find him. For all we know, he may be dead, or he may reappear tomorrow. Of course, our greatest fear has been that Barnes discovered the truth about the secret route via the beer barrels and revealed to the Scottish queen that her correspondence was being watched by us. So far, that does not seem to have happened. But the danger is always there. And any one of our agents could be turned by the enemy at any time and the first person they would want to eliminate, after Sir Francis, is me. So you are taking quite a gamble, young Kit, riding in company with me.’

He gave me a bleak smile. However, I glanced around at the escort of twenty armed men who surrounded us. Any assassin who made an attempt on Phelippes’s life would pay for it with his own. We were even more heavily protected than Sir Francis had been, returning to London from Barn Elms. It was true that this was a longer journey and would pass through parts of the country from which Babington hoped to draw some of his army. Sussex and particularly Kent had been mentioned in the conspirators’ plans, either from the number of Catholic families living here or from the counties’ proximity to France.

Moreover, the area around Rye, our destination, was a favourite landing place for the priests whom William Allen had been smuggling into England for many years. Both the fishing ports and the bleak area known as Romney Marsh had provided hiding places for traitors in the past.

So I rode south in a very different frame of mind from when I had travelled to Hartwell Hall. Then I had been apprehensive about my journey’s end, but the journey itself under the soft skies of spring had been pleasant. Now I was alert to danger even during the journey itself, despite our armed guard. It was early summer now. The meadows were full of luscious green grass, sprinkled over with meadow flowers like an image of Paradise in a Flemish tapestry – red campion, ox-eye daisies, viper’s bugloss, meadowsweet, cow parsley. Once, on the verge of the road, just escaping the hooves of our passing horses, I saw a clump of the rare and delicate lady’s slipper orchid.

I had nerved myself to ask if I might ride Hector again, and my request had been granted by Sir Francis himself. The horse knew me at once, whickering in greeting. I hoped it was partly for myself and not merely for my pocket full of June-fall apples. We were at ease with each other, which could not be said of Phelippes, who sat on his horse like a marionette whose strings have been cut, slumped over as if he was still pouring over the documents on his desk. Perhaps I have inherited some affinity for horses from my grandfather, for to be mounted again always lifts my spirits. Phelippes merely endured, like the patient man he was, but he decreed that we would ride no further than Sevenoaks that first day. This was a journey of about thirty miles and by the end of it I could see that Phelippes could have ridden no further.

‘We are to stay in guest rooms at Knole,’ he said, as we rode towards the manor house just outside the village. ‘The estate is owned by the Earl of Leicester but is leased to a gentleman called John Lennard. Sir Francis has been given permission by the Earl for us to spend the night there, both on our way to Rye and on our return. There are, I believe, conditions in the lease which permit the Earl to make use of the house when he chooses.’

‘That must be somewhat trying for Master Lennard,’ I said, as we passed under the great gateway.

‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘But a convenience for us.’

It seemed that the Lennard family was in London at present, but we were made welcome by a very grand steward, who seemed from his dress and manner to rank not much below an Earl himself. I wondered whether he came with the house. At one time, I believe, the land and the original house belonged to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the great King Henry had such a way with him that many churchmen were only too glad to present him with their properties. His daughter had given it to one of her favourite courtiers, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, though I am not sure whether he ever lived there himself.

We were extremely well fed and wined, as vicarious guests of the Earl, and I slept that night on five mattresses of increasing softness as they towered ever higher above the bed ropes, cradled between hangings embroidered with pomegranates, peacocks’ feathers and cornucopias, in an abundance that signified the enthusiasm of the embroider if little rational juxtaposition.

The next morning we set out early, crossing the Downs as the sun burned away the morning mist. At the highest point of our road, Phelippes reined in and extended his arm, pointing south.

‘Now that the mist has cleared, you can see from here to the coast. There is the sea, directly south.’

I followed his finger and caught the unmistakable glitter of the sea beyond the rolling farmland and scattered belts of woodland.

‘Rye is to the southeast of here,’ he said, waving his hand in that direction, ‘but those woods hide it from view. We’ll spend the night in Hawkhurst, about a twenty-five mile ride altogether today. Tomorrow it will be much shorter to Rye. Only about fifteen miles.’

He seemed more at ease on his horse today and thanks to our early start we reached Hawkhurst in the late afternoon. It was no more than a village, though a prosperous one, boasting three inns. Standing where it did, on roads leading from the south coast to both London and Canterbury, it probably did well out of travellers like ourselves. Phelippes had sent one of our men ahead to book rooms in the largest inn for our party, so that when we arrived we were made welcome by a plump innkeeper and his even plumper wife. I believe you can judge the quality of an inn’s food by the girth of its proprietors, and the Hawkhurst inn did not disappoint.

We took supper soon after we arrived, then Phelippes retired to his rooms to write letters and to peruse papers which reached us by a courier from Sir Francis soon after we arrived at the inn ourselves. It seemed too early on a lovely summer’s evening to withdraw to my room, so I decided to take a walk around the village. I did, however, ask Phelippes’s permission first.

‘Yes, I do not see why you should not,’ he said, ‘provided you stay within the village and do not stray outside. Will you take one of the guards?’

‘No.’ I laughed. ‘I am sure I will be quite safe.’ This was the man who sent me home across the dark and dangerous streets of London alone and after midnight. A quiet stroll along the sunny lanes of the village hardly seemed a threat.

The inn faced on to a broad village green, grazed by a flock of sheep. To one side was a duck pond, where a number of ducklings trailed after their mothers, bobbing about like corks while the older birds dived amongst the weed. Beside the pond, the village stocks, uninhabited at present. I followed the lane which ran alongside the green, past several comfortable cottages, each with its apple and pear trees, its vegetable plot, and a pig being fattened for winter. Apart from the income generated for the inns from travellers passing through, there must be other occupations for these villagers.

In a few of the cottages as I passed, I noticed looms placed near the window in the front room, and weavers at work where they could benefit from the light, but I also became aware of noises coming from further along the road – loud clanging of metal, like a blacksmith’s workshop, but a blacksmith for giants. I could see smoke, too, more smoke than you would expect to see on a fine summer’s evening. The air smelled curious, too. A harsh, metallic smell that caught in the back of my throat.

As I rounded a bend in the road, just past the last cottage, I saw that another lane led off to my left, where all the noise and smoke and smell were coming from. I walked a little way down the lane towards a group of grimy brick buildings, but stopped, unsure of my welcome. A cart was approaching me from the direction of the buildings, drawn by two great Shire horses who strained at the traces. I stepped on to the verge to let it pass. The noise was almost deafening here, but I called out to the carter, ‘Is that an ironworks?’

He did not stop, but removed his hat and wiped his face with the back of his hand, for he was sweating from the heat that rolled down the lane after him.

‘Aye. Hawkhurst iron foundry.’ He peered at me incredulously. ‘Have you not heard of us? Finest cannon foundry in the country.’

‘I’m just passing through from London to Rye,’ I said apologetically. ‘I didn’t know of you.’

The cart was creaking slowly past and I realised why the horses were labouring so hard. The cart held three newly cast cannon, gleaming in the sun. No wonder the carter would not stop. It would have taken immense effort to get the load rolling again.

‘Well, you won’t find better cannon nowhere,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Wealden iron stone and Wealden coal and Wealden charcoal and Wealden water to drive the machinery. And the skill of our founders, better’n any man.’

With that the cart turned into the road leading north, headed, I supposed, for London. I drew a little nearer the buildings and saw what looked like a scene from some vision of Hell. Outlined against the crimson flames of furnaces, half-naked men caked in sweat and soot manoeuvred machinery whose purpose I could not fathom. I saw a waterfall of molten metal, as dazzling to the eye as looking into the heart of the sun. Men like tiny ants moved around it, using long rods to move the throat of the machine which vomited this beautiful, terrible liquid. I backed away, my lungs filled with the choking heat and smell, my clothes already sprinkled with a fine black dust of sooty flakes.

I turned and walked away, back down the lane where cows grazed unconcerned on either side. So this was where the prosperity of Hawkhurst lay. And these were the cannon which must arm our ships and army against the foreign invader. What blighted lives those men must lead, to forge for us protection against our enemies.

We reached Rye the next day, a pretty town whose busy streets sloped down to the harbour, one of the famous Cinque Ports, a confederation established centuries ago to guard against invasion from France. Even earlier the Romans had built forts around this corner of England, which they called the Saxon Shore, to fend off the barbarian invasions. There was a sobering lesson to be read here, for the Romans had gone and the Saxons had invaded all too successfully. Was history to repeat itself? In the lands from which the Saxons had come, we were even now fighting against the Spanish in support of the Protestants of the Low Countries. Sir Francis’s son-in-law, Sir Philip Sidney, was there and so was the Earl of Essex. From words I had heard exchanged between Sir Francis and Phelippes, my lord of Essex – who saw himself as a great general – was a dangerous liability to our army. Sir Philip, himself a skilled soldier but obliged to defer to the Earl’s rank, was near despair with Essex’s arrogant blundering that had already cost men’s lives.

Looking out across the waters of the Channel from Rye, I thought what a narrow moat it was for the protection of England. A Spanish fleet sailing from the Low Countries or a French one sailing from the northeast coast of France had little more than twenty or thirty miles of sea to cross. Not much more than we had ridden that day from Hawkhurst.

I spoke my thoughts aloud to Phelippes as we stood looking over the town wall to the harbour below.

‘And that is why we must remain ever vigilant,’ he said. ‘It is one of the reasons Sir Francis sent you with me, so that you would understand just how vulnerable we are.’

‘Not as vulnerable as Portugal was to Spain,’ I said. ‘We had no Channel to protect us. When I was ten years old I stood and watched the Spanish army march into Coimbra. They had marched all the way from the Spanish border and not a finger was lifted to stop them. Our army just melted away.’

‘That will not happen in England,’ Phelippes said grimly. ‘Our army will stand and fight any who manage to break through the defences of our navy.’

I told him about the cannon foundry I had seen at Hawkhurst.

‘Aye, the Wealden forest is the heart of cannon casting. The iron masters are working at full stretch to arm the ships our shipwrights are building.’

‘Master Phelippes,’ I said hesitantly, as we headed back to our inn, ‘I have been thinking much about the matter of the Scottish queen.’

‘Yes?’

‘If, as you expect, she reveals that she is privy to this plot for invasion and assassination of the Queen, then she is guilty under the Act for the Surety of the Queen.’

‘Aye, she would be.’

‘And that is treason?’

‘It is treason.’

‘Punishable by death.’

‘Indeed. But only after a fair trial and the imposition of the death penalty, which means the Queen would have to sign the order.’

I looked at him. His shoulders were hunched and his mouth was turned down in disapproval. How he and Walsingham had laboured to protect the Queen and the country, yet I did not think she thanked them for it.

‘Well, supposing the Scottish queen were to be sentenced to death, and executed. What would France and Spain do then? I do not think they would walk away.’

‘They would not. I fear the threat of invasion would be even greater.’

‘But then . . .’ I wanted to say, ‘But what has it all been for?’ Yet I could not utter the words.

He stopped at the door of the inn. ‘You are wondering whether everything we have done has been pointless? You must remember, Mary covets the Queen’s throne. With her gone, there is no clear Catholic claimant, except, of course, Lord Strange, though I think he has no taste for monarchy himself.’

I looked at him blankly. ‘Lord Strange? The Earl of Derby’s son? I did not realise that he is somehow caught up in this complex web of royalty.’

‘He is descended from King Henry VII, and his mother the countess was named in Henry VIII’s will in the line of succession after our present Queen. If she dies before the Queen, which seems likely, Lord Strange would be next in line, although, as I say, I do not think he seeks the honour. However, the mostly feasible claimant with Mary gone would be Mary’s son, King James VI of Scotland. He is a Protestant and receives a pension from our Queen. No force sent by the Duke of Guise or King Philip would seek to put him on the throne. Therefore there is no figure around whom a conspiracy like this could be formed. Nevertheless, that does not rule out a revenge attack by either or both of them. Nothing would please them more – or indeed the Bishop of Rome – than to overrun England and force us to accept the rule of the papacy.’

This conversation, and all the impressions which had crowded in on me over the last three days, kept me awake that night. I tossed restlessly in my bed, even getting up and lighting my candle at one point. That merely made my wakefulness worse. I blew out my candle at last and lay staring at the ceiling in the faint light washing in from the window. Finally I slept, only to be woken, it seemed, at once, by the noise of the citizens of Rye going about their business in the streets.

After we had broken our fast, Phelippes bespoke a room where he could interview various of Walsingham’s men who worked in the area. I sat quietly in a corner, taking no part in the discussions, but listening attentively. First he interviewed the customs officials and searchers of Rye. Nothing and no one suspicious had come through the port that he did not already know about.

‘Traffic is down in Rye,’ the most senior port official said as he was leaving. ‘The silting up of the port grows worse every year. Landowners over in the Marsh keep trying to reclaim more land from the sea and it wreaks havoc on the shipping channels. As often as they do it, we keep taking them to court and getting an order for them to dredge the deep water channels that they’ve clogged up, but the minute our backs are turned, they’re at it again.’

The general advice from the Rye officials was that the port was so effectively policed now that no one would any longer try to smuggle men in through the town.

‘Anywhere between here and Hastings,’ they said. ‘There are half a dozen places with small fishing fleets and no proper supervision. That is where you want to be looking.’

‘What about the Marsh?’ Phelippes asked.

A shrug, a shake of the head. ‘Anywhere there a man might come ashore, but unless he knows the Marsh, he’d be a fool to do so. A local man might make his way safely out of the Marsh, but not a stranger, certainly not a foreigner.’

‘Not that they will be foreigners,’ Phelippes said, as the door closed on the last of the local men. ‘It is renegade Englishmen William Allen ships in, to our eternal shame and their damnation.’

The next day we rode out to begin our investigation of the cluster of villages, some of them no more than hamlets, which lay west along the coast towards Hastings. It was a dull morning, everything shrouded in a thick sea mist.

‘The very weather for slipping a man ashore,’ Phelippes said.

I nodded. We could barely see the track in front of our horses’ hooves. Our armed guard were somewhere nearby, but lost in the fog. It lay over us like a sodden blanket. Beaded moisture gleamed dully on Hector’s mane and I could feel the damp slowly soaking through the shoulders of my doublet. The fog smothered all sound, although from time to time some small sound – the click of an iron horseshoe against a stone, the tap of a sword against a spur, the lonely cry of a gull – would be oddly magnified and echo against the wall of fog as if it were a cliff.

We groped our way into the first village, a miserable huddle of a dozen poor houses, closed and shuttered like blank faces. Not a soul was to be seen. The village possessed no pier. Instead five fishing boats were simply hauled up on the shingle beach, tipped over on their rounded sides. Even the boats looked poor, their paint peeling and their woodwork patched here and there crudely with rough timber where the sea had done its damage over the years. These boats must have been built by the grandfathers of today’s fishermen and were held together now by little more than faith.

‘Could those boats cross to France?’ I asked Phelippes. ‘Surely they are too frail.’

He shrugged. ‘Desperate men might attempt it. And poverty makes men desperate.’

Nets of tarred cord were draped over the sides of the boats and spread out over ancient barrels, I suppose to dry them, though nothing would dry in this fog. We went from house to house with our questions: Had any strangers been seen in the neighbourhood? Where did the men fish? Did they ever carry passengers?

We were met by ugly stares and curt answers. It was the women who came to the doors, old women bent and wrapped up to the eyes in threadbare shawls and younger women clustered about with half naked children, all of them dirty and sullen. They had seen nothing, knew nothing.

‘Where are all the men?’ I said. ‘They are not at sea in this fog.’

‘Skulking in the back rooms,’ said Phelippes. ‘This coast is known for smuggling. They will be keeping out of the way of anyone in authority. I don’t care two farthings if they have been smuggling in French wine under their barrels of fish. We can leave that to the customs men in Rye. But they would not believe us if we signed a declaration in our own blood.’

He was becoming quite poetic in his frustration.