Low Treason

by Leonard Tourney

  That the Tower was a palace, the seat of kings, Matthew 241

  knew, but there was little in this grim pile which suggested a regal presence. It was, rather, a fortress and a prison— like Newgate, although sparsely populated, discriminating as to its inmates, and endowed with a portentous seriousness that was never so apparent as in the demeanor of the guards and warders, well-outfitted men, resolute in their duties, no idlers and vagabonds such as those who had found employment in the city prisons. In some remote apartment, Matthew recalled, the illustrious Ralegh had languished for the love of a lady; in another, and recently too, the young Earl of Essex had suffered for ambition and love of glory. Now Matthew Stock, clothier and constable of Chelmsford, trod upon these same ancient stones, caught up in the wake of the most powerful man in the realm.

  Soon they came to where Gervase Castell was lodged, a square, low-ceilinged room, dimly lighted and clammy, as though the torrential rain had managed to find access through the thick stone. The jeweler was sitting in a chair in the center of the chamber, his hands and feet bound. He was dressed still in the garb in which he had been apprehended, a dirty shirt open at the collar to show the white flesh beneath, plain workman’s breeches fitted with leather patches upon the knees and snug-fitting in the thighs, and an old pair of boots.

  At the jeweler’s side standing stiffly at attention was a heavy muscular yeoman of the guard in gold and scarlet. The man had a square, handsome face, thick, black brows, and a small mouth. Upon recognizing Cecil, he saluted and then stared straight ahead of him as though he and his prisoner were once again alone. Warily, Matthew took in the rest of the chamber. The chair in which Castell sat was the room’s sole piece of furniture. Two windows in the far end of the chamber admitted a feeble light, and the room smelled of sweat and urine, as though it had been a barracks, recently vacated. Cecil approached the guard, whispered something Matthew could not hear, and the guard left the chamber. Matthew heard the door bolted behind him.

  He looked at the jeweler. Castell’s face was pale and 242

  drawn. There were no signs that he had suffered more than the humiliation of having been arrested and bound, but his eyes, which had been raised to note Matthew’s and Cecil’s entrance, remained now fixed defensively upon some invisible object above them all.

  “Look you now,” said Cecil, turning from the prisoner to address Matthew. “Here is your Eye of the Basilisk. Much good he will do his master now, now that his eye has lost its luster. Isn’t that right, jeweler?”

  Castell made no response. It was as if he remained alone in the room, amused by the singularity of his own thoughts.

  “The man mimics the stoical disregard for his personal fate,” remarked Cecil with disgust. “He will show no sign of pain, no interest in life, no regret, no fear for the life to come, although he and his Spanish friends would have damned us all to a wicked Queen, and a false religion.”

  Through this, Castell remained silent. Cecil paused, scrutinizing the jeweler. Matthew did not know whether to respond to Cecil’s comments or remain silent himself. He was not sure why the knight had asked him to come. Was he to swear an oath here, with only Castell and Cecil present? Or did Cecil merely want an audience for his interrogation?

  Cecil began to walk around the bound man, holding his hands behind him, his head lipped forward as though in deep meditation. He continued his orbit around the chair for some time. Matthew thought of heavenly bodies. Cecil was the sun in its glory, resplendent and influential. Castell was the earth, the fixed center and yet dross, inferior, earthy. Matthew stood by awkwardly, watching this cosmic dance, waiting for Cecil’s next move, while the jeweler’s gaze remained fixed and his expression inscrutable.

  Then Cecil said: “We see here where greed comes at last. From assorted treacheries of a misspent, idle youth, the sort of crimes children perpetrate upon their playfellows—a stolen ball, ring, toy, or what have you—then these grow from misdemeanors to felonies to enormities in an inevitable progress and come at last to the greatest crime of all, treason.”

  “I have told you it was not money,” said Castell in a dry whisper, without looking up at his accuser.

  ‘‘So you did. A man may tell many things to another, but where is the truth?”

  Castell’s lips moved as though he were about to smile. Cecil turned to Matthew. “It seems our jeweler doesn’t wish to speak. I am loath to use the torturer’s tools, but I swear before God I will use what tools I must to come to the bottom of this conspiracy.” Cecil looked about the chamber as though he were seeking such a tool. There was another long silence; Castell’s face hardened again into an insolent indifference. His lips were pressed tightly together; his knuckles were white.

  Then all of a sudden Castell seemed to relax, as though he had reconciled himself to his fate. He looked up at Cecil and said: “You can forget your instruments, your tools, Sir Robert. I grant that I would find any one of them too painful to endure. I am not much for pain. See, I confess it openly. I begin with a plain truth: I am a coward.”

  “So, you will speak—and the truth?”

  “I have commenced to do so,” replied Castell. He was smiling now, but it was a hard smile as though the expression required great determination and discipline. “Since the plot is finished there is no point in farther concealment. Besides, it will satisfy a certain pride in me to relate it to you. It has a beauty about it.”

  “A beauty?”

  “The plot. I think you will understand, Sir Robert, although I doubt our friend the constable will, being the plain simple soul he is.”

  Matthew dismissed the slur, never one to take offense easily. Besides, the interrogation was Cecil’s business. Matthew resolved to keep quiet whatever the jeweler said, as long as he spoke no slander against Joan. That Matthew could not bear, no, not if the Queen herself were present.

  “It is a long story,” said Castell. “But I will not be tedious about it, for I doubt not but that it is a story you

  have heard before, Sir Robert. I am not a greedy man, as you seem to think. Money means little to me, but early in life I observed how important it was to other men. The world, sir, is in the shape of a coin, and in faith, in this emblem we see its very soul, hard, brittle, and treacherous—like coins of the realm that buy and sell—goods, cattle, men, indiscriminately.”

  “And jewels,” said Cecil.

  “And jewels. Yes, jewels, too.”

  Castell paused, as though to catch his breath, then he began to speak in the calm, measured phrases of one who has another man’s story to tell. “My mother was a servant in the court of King Henry. She was of good family, fallen into hardship; she was no drudge to carry out chamberpots and sweep rushes, but a personal servant to one of the ladies-in-waiting to the King’s last wife. She was my mother, and for that I honor her, but she was yet a woman, and she fell from grace—got herself with child—and came at last to marry when she was as large and round with me as a ripe pear. I would have landed upon my head on the chapel floor had she not married within a week of my appearance. This man was an old scholar of Latin. An old, besotted fool. Why did he marry? Pity it was, I think. Perhaps it was love. I have never known either impulse so how could I tell? So I had a father at the eleventh hour to smile upon my christening, but throughout my youth I was known as the bastard and treated scurvily by my fellows, the pages of the court who were my superiors in place but not in strength or cunning.”

  “You have a very high opinion of yourself,” said Cecil. “Had I not such opinion I would have thrown myself into the sea, for my childhood was one of such wretchedness that you would think it a tissue of lies were I to tell it.”

  “Come, be quick, man. Tell us about Spain.”

  “Spain? It’s a country in Europe, I think, full of fops and savages, another England.”

  Cecil’s face flushed and he made a threatening gesture. Castell said: “Strike me, Sir Robert, it will ease your anger and put you in a good mind for supper. I am mostr />
  uncomfortable here, sir, bound as you see me. May I not have the leisure to tell my tale at its own pace? I assure you all is relevant to its ending.”

  ‘‘Speak, then,” Cecil replied impatiently. ‘‘We will hear you out, but be sure you come to your end anon, for then you must see the headsman. He’s most concise, I assure you, in his work.”

  Castell smiled, looked quickly at Matthew, then back to the private sector of stale air in the middle of the chamber from which he seemed to be fetching these recollections. “My mother died within a year. I have no memory of her at all. I have been told that she was fair, and that in her beauty lay her fault, for she was taken advantage of by someone—I’ll not say by whom—not now at least. As for my presumptive father, he was old when he married. An old bachelor. As rotten as his books. He bequeathed to me only his name, which I englished soon enough, for he was a Florentine by birth and the English can hardly bear an Italian in their own country. ’ ’

  “So on to your wretched childhood. It could not have been that wretched. Even the lowest of servants eats well in a king’s court.”

  “Well enough do they eat, but how do they live? Man doth not live—you know the rest, an old saw, much belied by experience, I think. But it was true of me. I fed well enough, became stout as you see me still. But I knew not a man or woman of the court but I hated him—or her—for what they thought of me. They called me bastard, you know. The shy stepson of a sniveling scholar, a cuckold. They had many such names for me, and every one of them burned upon my heart. Could I open my breast you would see them still.”

  “You are full of a womanish self-pity. Don’t tell us that their ill use of you led you to treason.”

  “And why not?” cried Castell, straining at his bonds, his eyes fiery now with anger and purpose. “Money is a drab, obvious motive—as common as a flea although I grant it is more wholesome. I was wronged. I was wronged.” Castell’s voice became shrill. “I was no son of a scholar with ink in his veins and a privy member as

  useless as a broken spar to hoist a sail upon. Look at my face, Mr. Secretary, my nose, mouth, eyes, brow, you who have spent your days in the palaces and great houses of the land. Have you seen anything like it? Does it not resemble another face—one that you are too young to remember but one your father, the great Lord Burghley knew, a face for which he would have laid down his life. Look at my face, for if ever a face bore the imprint of the father mine does.”

  For a moment Cecil studied the prisoner’s face. ‘‘Royal Henry?” said Cecil.

  “Well may you say royal Henry,” said Castell, a tear glistening in his eyes like a little pearl.

  “What proof have you?”

  “Proof? Wherefore proof? You see the face, the eyes are Henry’s, the nose, the mouth. Yes, look at the mouth, small and delicate though the face be round and fleshy.”

  “Well, jeweler, I grant there is a likeness, but that hardly proves a thing. The King had an English face. Your mother was English. He who begot you may well have been English, too, but that hardly proves royal blood courses through your veins.”

  “There was a ring.”

  “A ring.”

  “My mother had it. The King gave it to her as a pledge.”

  “When?”

  “Not six months before he died and I came into the world to be called bastard. How great his lust was need not be told. It’s a matter for chronicles. His appetite was unsatiable.”

  “Unsatiable, yes. What has happened to the ring?”

  “It was lost.”

  “How convenient,” said Cecil cynically. “So now you alone remain to testify to your paternity—as though you were present at your bastardizing.”

  “You may mock me if you will,” replied Castell sullenly. “What I have said is the truth. As God is my witness.”

  “God will not witness for you, Mr. Castell. Since you 247

  have denied him, he will deny you. But what’s all this to the purpose? Even if you were great Harry’s bastard you must share the honor with a hundred or more, those not since hanged, that is. Elizabeth would be no less a Queen, nor you more noble a subject. Your illegitimacy would have barred you no less than your priority among Henry’s offspring.”

  ‘‘I cared nothing about that. I mean about being King.”

  “Nor about the money. Well, what was it, then? Tell us, man, we’ve not all day to stand about conversing here with you.”

  “You want to know about the Spaniards?”

  “Of course.”

  The jeweler closed his eyes as though to bring the memory into focus; he took a deep breath; he shrugged. “Why not? It makes no difference now. Save that were I not to tell, you might never know and that would be a great pity. ’ ’

  “For whom?”

  “For me, most of all. I want you to know, Sir Robert.

  Oh, yes, I want you to know. Would that all England might know.”

  “Pray, no more enigmas. Speak;”

  “I lived at court until I was fourteen or fifteen. I served in the scullery, and stank thereby in the nostrils of my fellows. I sought employment elsewhere, but because I had no family, no friends, there was nothing for me. I had my choice at last of turning thief or soldier, two occupations between which there is very little difference, I assure you. I chose the former and found myself among a merry crew of conycatchers and pimps, great professors of their art. They kept a hard school but I was most diligent as a pupil and soon struck out on my own. No trick of the trade did I lack. In those days I had a cheerful countenance, a sinewy leg and a stomach as flat as a wall. My face was honest, though the brain was full of mischief, and there ; were few who penetrated my stratagems. I plied my trade in London for five years, until I fell afoul of the law and was brought before the magistrate for my crimes, an old bearded gentleman near seventy with bleeding gums and great watery eyes that never blinked. This reverend gen, 248

  tleman prided himself upon his stem punishment and wanted to have me hanged forthwith. So he sentenced me, but I escaped by greasing the palm of my jailer and since my face and feme had by that time been bruited about the city I resolved to quit the country. By good chance I found myself in the retinue of a wealthy young man of good family about to take the tour. I puffed my little French up until it became a mastery and was soon employed as a tutor. Thereupon we traveled to France where my young master finished his education in the Parisian brothels. I say finished by design, for finish he did, graduating quick-pace magna cum pox.”

  “Then?”

  “Shortly I was out on my ear again. In Paris, without a shilling to my name, one sword, two suits of livery, and some little experience as my inheritance. I would have resumed my former profession but I knew not the tongue sufficiently. I drifted south, came to Spain. There I encountered certain clergymen, Jesuits, hardy fellows with agile brains, clever tongues, and stomachs of unexplored dimensions. Out of guile or goodness—God knows—they took me in and fed me. They worked mightily to convert me to their religion and I let them think they had succeeded, for I soon saw it was to my advantage. I taught them English that did not already know it, and in due time made the acquaintance of some of the gentry and at last the nobility of the region, telling them that I was the younger son of an English earl. They never disputed my story. There I lived for many years.”

  “When did you become a Spanish agent?”

  “I do not recollect the year. I had come to know a certain duke—”

  “His name?”

  “No matter. He was a fellow of little consequence.” Cecil was listening intently now.

  • Castell continued, “At that time he was an old man and he harbored a bitter hatred of the English. It was something to do with treasure ships sunk by that devil Hawkins, or perhaps it was Ralegh. I do not recall. This duke had been in his youth a hellion, but in his dotage, pious. His

  house, I recall, was floor to ceiling in popish images of this saint or that, of the Virgin Mother in a thousand languorous poses.
One day I sat at his table conversing with him while he told me as he had done often of English perfidy, seeming to forget that England was my country— or perhaps remembering very well and delighting in the slander. In any case, the old man broke off suddenly, thrust his head at me, drooling from the nether lip, and asked if I would do him some small, inconsequential service for which he would pay a great sum. By God, I will, said I, though it be to my peril. This I said jokingly, you understand, thinking that the old devil wanted naught more than to appoint me as secretary or tutor to one of his family. But no, that was not his intent. He wanted me to return to England bearing certain instructions to personages of his acquaintance.”

  “Spaniards or Englishmen?”

  “Some Spaniards, some Englishmen. By this time it had been nearly twenty years since I had stepped upon my native soil and I admit to having a certain curiosity as to how things had changed in my absence. Besides, I knew there would be no danger now. The magistrate who had sentenced me was long moldering in his grave, and time, so much scorned by us all, had invested me with the best of disguises. Shortly thereafter I set sail, journeyed straightway to London, delivered the messages, and returned within the month, thinking all the while how I might spend the wealth the duke had promised me. To shorten my tale, I came to the duke’s house and he had not finished counting out the gold into my hand but he asked me if I would be so kind as to continue in his service.”

  “As a courier?” asked Cecil.