Low Treason

by Leonard Tourney

  Joan agreed, smiling nervously. She was standing there in the doorway in her nightgown and cap, feeling much too old, immodest, and uncomely before this virtual stranger to take much pride in Matthew’s praise of her wit. Out of his pale eyes, Beauclerk stared at the couple with new interest.

  “Give us ten minutes to make ourselves decent in,” Matthew said to Beauclerk, who, scowling, agreed and said that he would wait at the foot of the stairs.

  While the Stocks made themselves ready, they talked in excited whispers. Joan bad brought two gowns from Chelmsford in addition to that which Starkey had ruined and was unsure which was the more suited to this unexpected audience with the First Secretary. Beauclerk had told them they would ride horseback to Cecil’s house on the Strand, and Matthew suggested therefore that she wear the poorer gown, thinking she would have less to lose from the chafing of the saddle or the dust of travel. Besides, he reminded her, it was the middle of the night. What in the way of preparation could even Sir Robert Cecil expect at this hour?

  But Joan made up her own mind and chose the newer gown, declaring that she would not appear before Cecil a beggar’s mistress, no, not if it were midnight and the inn afire and not a drop of water in the Thames to quench it in.

  The gown she had worn but once and the cloth still smelled new and felt rich and fine in her hand. It was a deep purple and had trunk sleeves, a neat little bodice embroidered daintily with gold thread, and a ruff collar that accentuated the oval shape of her face. Upon her head she wore a velvet cap of the sort then much in fashion and upon her finger a gold ring marked with her initials. Donning this ensemble required a full thirty minutes which Matthew endured because he knew no manner of insistence would hurry her.

  From below, Beauclerk pleaded with them to hasten. The matter was urgent, he said.

  Finally Joan was dressed and she looked to Matthew for his approval. This he gave readily with a sigh of relief and they joined Beauclerk.

  “In good time, marry,” Beauclerk muttered in exasperation.

  “You’d have me go naked, then?” replied Joan sharply.

  “Nay,” returned Beauclerk, “but while my master yet lives.”

  Joan brushed off the secretary’s insolence and motioned him to proceed. Beauclerk led die way down the stairs and to the stable of the inn where he had left the horses with a hostler who was in a foul mood for having been awakened and seemed little merrier for the pennies Beauclerk handed him.

  Beauclerk asked Joan if she could ride. She said that she could, wondering at the same time what he would have done with her had she answered otherwise. She looked uncertainly at her mount. It stomped its feet nervously in the straw, its nostrils inflating and deflating with excitement, its muscles taut with energy. The mare was fitted with an elegant saddle of the sort great ladies rode upon, of fine-tooled leather and silverwork. The mare looked at her with its great brown eyes and she thought, what if the beast bolts, throws me on the stones?

  Joan saw herself bloody, her new gown in tatters.

  Sensing her anxiety, Matthew led her toward the horse, patting her elbow comfortingly. He bid her hold fast to the pommel and helped her up while her gown spread out over the horse’s flank. With her free hand Joan reached forward to stroke the mare’s neck and withers. The gentle stroking seemed to calm the animal. The mare ceased stomping and looked about at the other horses. Matthew was mounting now. Was it her imagination or did his horse, a bay gelding, seem more docile than her own?

  Beauclerk was watching them, saying something to the hostler, his face still and expressionless. The horse he sat upon was large, black, and powerful. In his left hand Beauclerk held the torch that would illuminate their jour- 1 ney. Then he nodded for them to follow and led the way out through the inn yard into the street.

  Quickly they advanced to a canter. Above them the moon was sailing between large billowy clouds. The street itself was deserted, the windows shuttered, the doors bolted. It was a city of shades now, and the solemn glow of moonlight and the shadows of the riders against the walls of houses gave Matthew an eerie feeling that did not leave until they arrived at Cecil’s residence.

  The house sat back from the street, and was in the shape of a quadrangle with one side lying along the Strand from which it was entered through an archway. Opposite to this, only partly visible to Matthew, were the main living quarters, rising a good three stories with a noble roof bristling with chimneys. There were many windows, all dark, and Matthew watched them curiously as a serving man shook from his lethargy to admit them through the iron gate at the archway. They passed across the cobblestone courtyard where another servant materialized from the shadows to help them dismount and led the horses away.

  Beauclerk motioned them to follow and they entered a side door and began walking through a succession of rooms of increasing size. Matthew had been in Cecil’s great house of Theobalds and so to him this habitation seemed modest by comparison but to Joan, who had hardly uttered a word since leaving the inn, this was a palace. Knowing his wife

  as he did, Matthew knew just how she would be taking in all of what she saw.

  Presently they came to what seemed a smaller apartment. Beauclerk stopped and knocked softly at a door and announced them. At once Cecil’s voice could be heard from the other side of the door beckoning them to come.

  Robert Cecil was dressed in a shirt of fine Holland silk opened at the collar and was standing behind a desk in the center of the chamber. He welcomed them, then dismissed Beauclerk, pointing at the same time to chairs in which the Stocks were to sit. Then he began to apologize for his quarters. They were small and dark and cluttered, he said. He explained that he was in the process of building a new house in the Strand and everything was at sixes and sevens. Matthew made a sympathetic face in response, and as Cecil talked Matthew cast his eyes about the room furtively. A high molded ceiling arched over a room almost too full of furniture. There was a great store of books on one wall; the floor was laid with carpet, not strewn with rushes, as in most houses, and in one comer there was a magnificent sideboard, draped with a Turkey carpet, upon which shone a magnificent collection of silverplate that acted as a reflector to the candles on the board. Behind Cecil an elegant tapestry covered what was probably one of the mullioned bow windows Matthew knew would overlook the river. In daytime the room would be well lighted. He imagined Cecil sitting there, reading one of his books or staring from the window, shaping England’s course, dreaming her fixture greatness.

  Intently curious, Joan saw first the man himself, correcting the impressions she had made from Matthew’s description, finding him smaller in stature than she had imagined, the body that of a large child. She could see the hunched back, but she noticed that his face was fair, his brow generous and calm, his eyes penetrating and intelligent. An altogether handsome man, she thought, were one to consider only the head. Cecil stood behind his chair, upon the back of which his right hand reposed lightly, as though he were upholding the chair and not the chair supporting

  his hand. For all the knight’s courtliness and delicate frame, there was strength and energy in his carriage.

  While Cecil welcomed them both and then very flatteringly paid court to her, she half listened and half gawked at the splendid chamber. Upon entering she had quickly taken in its more conspicuous features. Now she focused on the details with that alert interest of one whose life is spent with rooms and their furnishings. She observed that the books that filled the high shelves and burdened his desk were for use, not for show as in other men’s houses. Some were laid open, many were stacked at angles, as though they had been quickly taken up, perused, and then cast aside again. Through an open door to the adjoining room she spied a laige four-poster bed. Cecil’s bed. This was his private apartment. She felt honored and humbled and estranged all at the same moment, for there was an undefinable masculinity about these quarters, although there was nothing she could see that was exclusively a man’s.

  Her attention returned abruptly
to the conversation, which had now involved her husband. Cecil invited them to sit. He took his chair behind his desk. In the candlelight the secretary’s eyes were intent with expectation.

  “Your letter abusing my virtue has had great success, Mistress Stock,” Cecil said, while Joan blushed fiercely at his phrasing. “Gervase Castell has come out to the lure, I have met with him, and am now well on the way to discovering his purpose.”

  Cecil quickly summarized his meeting with Castell at St. Michael’s. When he had concluded his narrative, Joan asked: ‘‘Then the plot does concern the state?”

  Cecil nodded. He made his hands into a steeple and rested his upper teeth on his fingertips thoughtfully. ‘‘As price for the return of the letter and Castell’s silence I am to recommend a certain gentleman to an office of considerable strategic importance.” *

  “Will you do it?” asked Matthew.

  “Absolutely not. The gentleman in question is an able soldier, but the family has Papist sympathies. His appointment would be most unseemly under ordinary circumstances, but in this critical moment it could be disastrous. The office in question commands England’s coastal defense, her soft underbelly.”

  “What is the next step?” asked Joan. “Seize Castell?” Cecil paused before replying as though he were still working the next step out in his own mind. “In due course. First, I wish to investigate both Castell and the man I am to appoint more thoroughly. I see the Queen Wednesday. Castell will not expect the appointment announced until later in the week. That gives me two good days and possibly a third to determine the extent of the conspiracy. It’s most unlikely Castell’s alone in this, and I still have to determine the identity of this Basilisk, but I’ll root them out, never fear. ’ ’

  “Three days is not much time,” observed Matthew, amazed at Cecil’s coolness in the face of the jeweler’s treachery.

  “Yet it is time and we must use it to advantage,” replied Cecil.

  “What can we do to help?” asked Joan.

  “Your testimonies will be essential, for as of now only you can connect Castell with this plot.”

  “You did not see him?” asked Joan.

  “No. My back was to him while we talked! Moreover, you can also identify some of Castell’s men. This person who came very near to drowning you, Mr. Stock, what was his name?”

  “John Starkey.”

  “Yes, Starkey, the beggarly knave. Doubtless there are others at his shop who are equally involved. I shall have them all rounded up in good time.”

  Cecil suppressed a yawn and smiled. “Forgive me. I’ve been up all night with this business. The spirit is willing but the flesh, the flesh, eh?” Cecil smiled amiably and rose from his chair. “Return to the Bell and wait there until you hear from me again,” he said, leading them to the door and pulling a long silken cord. “But take care whom you admit to your chamber. We have yet to discover the blackmailer’s fellows and, given the nature of blackmail, he may have a good many of them and in very high

  places, too. When Castell’s in the Tower I’ll call for you. Beauclerk will escort you back to your beds. You’ll make it just in time. It will be dawn in an hour or so. Remember, caution is the word. Castell thinks you dead, Mr. Stock, let him think so still.”

  Presently Beauclerk returned to escort them home again. They said their farewells, greatly excited by the interview with Cecil, and then followed the young man out of the house where they found their horses waiting.

  It was dawn. They had not been back to the Bell for an hour when they were startled by a furious pounding at the door.

  “What now?” exclaimed Matthew. He had been sitting thinking of breakfast, suffering a gnawing hunger for he had eaten poorly the day before. Joan had resumed her needlework. Although weary, both realized the futility of going to bed again, not after their visit with Cecil. It was all too exciting.

  She looked at her husband as he rose to see what was the cause of this new commotion. “Faith,” she said, “it is Beauclerk come again with fresh news, though I would not have thought it to fall so hard upon our visit to Cecil.”

  “Most likely,” Matthew grumbled as he unbolted the door.

  And there before him was John Starkey, looking very grim. Behind him were two stout fellows in the buff jerkins the sheriff’s men wore. Matthew gaped, his jaw falling in amazement.

  Starkey and the officers shoved Matthew aside and strode to the center of the room. Joan had dropped her stitchery into her lap and was looking at Matthew for an explanation.

  “Arrest them both,” Starkey commanded.

  Matthew protested. “What charge, my masters?”

  One of the officers, a great burly fellow with a square jaw and blank angry eyes, seized Matthew by the arm and threw him against the wall. Joan shrieked and ran toward her husband but Starkey blocked her course, pinching the soft flesh of her upper arm until she cried out in pain.

  “Be still, vixen,’’ Starkey hissed, looking at her dangerously.

  The other officer, a ruddy-complexioned younger man, had drawn his sword and was brandishing it in the air threateningly.

  “See if he has the chain about him,” said Starkey, addressing the officer from whose grip Matthew was at the moment struggling to free himself.

  The burly officer shoved Matthew against the wall again, ordered him to hold or die, and prepared to search Matthew’s person. In vain Matthew protested this rough handling, declaring that he had no chain—either his own or any other man’s or woman’s about him—but the officer paid no heed. He conducted his search with a ruthless methodicalness, while Joan viewed these proceedings with her eyes round with anguish and bewilderment.

  When the officer had satisfied himself that Matthew had no chain upon him, he declared the same to Starkey, who, undeterred by this, commenced a long litany of curses directed at the Stocks. Finally, having exhausted his repertory, he said, “This is the man and this is the woman,” casting Matthew a venomous glance. “I saw him steal the chain with my very eyes, as God is my witness. I would have apprehended him myself had he not quickly escaped into the crowd. And this woman here—” Starkey turned threateningly to Joan—“was with him. Search her as well.”

  Starkey seized Joan again and flung her into the arms of the younger officer. Joan shrieked and then regarded Starkey fiercely, hot with rage now by this impending assault upon her person.

  “Should we not search the room and their gear first,” suggested the younger officer, apparently hesitant to commence hostility with a woman who appeared able to defend herself.

  “Oh, very well,” answered Starkey, with obvious reluctance. He began to search about the bed himself, pulling off sheets and coverlets and then dragging Joan’s chest from beneath the bed and struggling with the lock. He broke it with the butt of his knife and began plundering

  the contents, strewing Joan’s garments about him in a great flurry of rage and indignation. When it seemed he had plumbed the bottom, he suddenly cried out in great excitement and held up in his fist a slender gold chain.

  Matthew and Joan exchanged looks of wonder, but Matthew, knowing Starkey’s perfidy all too well, knew also what had happened. With his back to them all the while he searched, Starkey had cleverly planted the chain where he could find it.

  Starkey gave the now empty chest a sturdy kick and waved the chain in Matthew’s face triumphantly. “See, see,’’ he sputtered, spraying his saliva about him, “what more evidence is needed? The thief has given the chain to his whore to conceal for him. Is it not after the fashion, sirs? Do not these whoremasters practice these devices more regularly than a cock his crowing?”

  At this Joan exploded. “Whore? Whore? Whom do you call whore, you bursten-belly knave! You whoremasterly rogue! You, you ...”

  At the same instant Matthew freed himself from the burly officer and rushed at Starkey, swinging awkwardly at his jaw. Starkey dodged the blow deftly and gave Matthew a solid jab to the stomach that set him down hard in the rushes and left him b
reathless and gasping for air. Nonetheless he managed to cry, “The chain is not mine! Nor is it my wife’s. I have never until this minute set eyes upon the cursed thing. It was he,” said Matthew, gathering fire now and pointing a shaking finger at Starkey, “who practices upon your credulity. It was he, Starkey is he called, who within this week has tried to drown me in the Thames.”

  Starkey pointed a derisive finger at Matthew and laughed scornfully. “See, sirs, how an honest man is served. I see a crime, I accuse the criminal, and I am accused. But who accuses me? Who accuses me? A thief, sirs! A proven villain, as our discovery of the evidence makes plain!”

  “I am Matthew Stock of Chelmsford, clothier and constable,” said Matthew, struggling to his feet.

  “Matthew Stock he says! But see the porter below, or the innkeeper,” Starkey declared. “They know him as

  Miles Merryweather. Lo, now, an honest man with two names. Does this deception not reek of villainy?”

  Matthew began to explain why he and Joan had registered at the Bell under assumed names but it was futile. How could he explain it? It would take time, more persuasiveness than he had at his present command. What a clever devil this Starkey was, what an incredibly clever devil.

  ‘‘Why do you wait?” asked Starkey, turning from Matthew to the officers. “Bear them away to the prison.”

  ‘‘We must go to the magistrate first,” said the younger officer.

  “Go then,” answered Starkey, “and take the wench he says is his wife with him.”

  But this insult was more than Joan could bear. She ran toward Starkey flailing her arms wildly; her blow was truer than her husband’s had been. She landed a resounding slap upon the man’s face. Starkey gaped in astonishment. But the astonishment lasted only a moment. Quickly he seized her and began to shake her violently, his little beady eyes smoldering with hate. She struggled in his arms, struggled to claw his face. Matthew joined the fray and for a moment the three of them were locked in combat until the officers joined to separate them and order them to keep the peace at peril of their lives.