A Dangerous Trade: An Elizabethan Spy Thriller

by Steven Veerapen

  A Dangerous Trade

  Steven Veerapen

  Copyright © Steven Veerapen 2018

  The right of Steven Veerapen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in 2018 by Sharpe Books.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Part One: Winter Beckons

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Part Two: Spring’s Dawn

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  Part Three: A Summer Storm

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  Part Four: The Fall of Leaves

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  He has no idea he’s being watched. Idiot. Carefully, almost daintily, he picks his way down the slope of the hill, his arms outstretched for balance. He moves with all the grace of a crippled donkey as he picks through the carpet of burnt orange. His face is a curious mix of exertion, boredom, and disgust at his task. It’s a smug face, self-satisfied. Hateable. Stopping to mop his brow, he spits, looks back up at the castle on the hill, and then removes a paper from his doublet. He nods his head slowly, before turning skyward and exhaling relief. Back into his breast pocket goes the paper.

  He has no idea he’s being stalked. His hunter has the measure of him, even from the occasional peek out from behind an old oak: a gentleman, playing at the art of spying. That was the way of it in England, regrettably – class over competence. The busy Secretary Cecil will learn the hard way how the game must be played.

  The gentleman spy sits down on an old log and unwraps a cloth. A little jumble of bread and cheese scatters across his lap. He sets to it. His Adam’s apple is quivering when an arm snakes around his neck. He has no time to cry out; his head snaps back and his food flies free. His killer holds on, squeezing the throat until life has fled too. Now he sets to work.

  Firstly, he thrusts his hands into the doublet and retrieves the paper. It’s the only one. That, at least, is clever. The writing is not cyphered; in fact, it’s written in a remarkably clear secretarial hand.

  Item: Tutbury. Divers entrances and exits. This is no fit place to keep a fallen dame secure. Another keeper and another lodging are most heartily recommended, or who can say what might fall out? Ever in Your Honour’s humble service, William Pursglove.

  William Pursglove, thinks the man who has felled him. Probably it was his real name. Cecil’s men don’t yet seem bright enough to have even understood the need for false ones. He produces his own paper and holds it up. They’re a close enough match – both without any special mark of their origin. He chances a look around before dragging the man behind the oak tree and producing his own stoppered inkwell, pen, and a cheap wooden pounce pot. Copying the hand of Pursglove, he writes his own message. He stutters at first, then the pen moves rapidly, the ink bleeding out.

  Item: Tutbury. A suitable place for a dame.

  The first two words are almost exact replicas, and he allows himself a smile as he scatters the thick flecks of sand on the ink and lets the wind take the rest. Now, the body.

  Firstly, he puts his new note in place of the original. Deep into the man’s pocket it goes. But the dead man is still warm. The eyelids and lashes quiver in the stiff breeze. He presses down once again on Pursglove’s windpipe, staring off into space as he does so. Once done, he pulls a knife from his belt and begins to saw at the finger joints – a good, sloppy job. He doesn’t particularly want the corpse’s rings, but it all has to look real. Throwing the fingers deeper into the woods, he gives a few quick jabs around the abdomen, the chest, each haphazard. He takes the purse of money too, making a thoroughly bad job of tearing and sawing at its string.

  He pauses to catch his breath. How stupid the corpse looks, gawking at him. In irritation he kicks it; no, he corrects himself – not irritation. It’s all for the good of making the whole dispatch seem like mischance. When he has a good lungful of wind again, he begins to drag the dead spy away from the castle, away from the woods, and towards the nearest stretch of brigand-haunted road.

  It’s an astonishingly freeing thing, to kill without qualm or conscience. Whether it was the dogs and cats he’d dispatched as a child or his slattern of a wife. Once you accepted it was God’s will, that he had gifted freedom from conscience, it was easy – it meant being a chosen one. Now to see if he can convince others to enter that light and liberty: to see if he can make others kill.

  Part One: Winter Beckons

  1

  An autumn breeze carried the chill of the season through Hampton Court’s park. It did not carry the whispered conference Jack Cole knew was taking place amongst the emaciated trees and frost-coated statues. He waited on the edge of the park, watching his breath as it puffed out and dissipated against the sky. A risky place for a meeting, he thought. Stupid, almost. But then why should a duke and an earl not meet wherever they choose?

  ‘Hunting in December,’ tutted Tom, Jack’s colleague. ‘My balls are freezing off.’ Both men knew that the hunt was a ruse. Somehow, though, it felt necessary to keep up the pretence, as though the bushes around them had ears. The building behind them did. It had a hundred windows, a thousand ears, a thousand eyes. Every chimney was a lurking menace. Jack gave himself a shake. It was too easy to become frightened when your master was doing something dangerous – it was like being a child caught raiding a bread stall. He pushed away that thought, before memories of his own childhood could rise up and taunt. No thievery, for sure, but – ‘Hold up,’ said Tom, his peppery beard folding down on his chest. ‘Listen. Aye, they’re coming in.’

  Before he saw anyone, Jack’s ears picked up the steady thud of approaching riders. They changed in quality as the hooves moved from grass to gravel. He tossed his head, sending his unruly brown fringe out of his eye as the duke of Norfolk appeared, a retainer at his back. The earl of Moray had presumably departed by some other route. A little cleverness, at least.

  As the senior man, Tom went ahead to take the duke’s bridle and speak with him. Jack kept his head bowed. The horses were his business, not the great men who sat on them. Still, he could make out a whispered conference, although the words were indistinct. It was a few seconds before he realised they had grown louder. Tom was hissing his name.

  Jack stepped forward, his head still lowered. He had begun moving towards the retainer’s horse when he felt Tom’s grip on his arm. Out of the side of his mouth the older man said, ‘the duke wants you.’ There was awe in his voice. Jack’s stomach shifted, and he felt his mouth run dry, but he stepped forward, his thick boots crunching. He thought of walking on eggshells, and then bones, before he chanced a look up.

  ‘Cole?’ The duke’s voice was high-pitched, a trace of the north rounding out his vowels. Rich north was what all the servants called it – proper-bred north. Jack kept his head down. ‘You are Jack Cole?’

  ‘I am that, your Grace.’ He swallowed.

  ‘Good man. Look at me when I speak to you.’ The duke’s command sounded more like a petulant entreaty. But Jack’s chin tilted.

  The only duke in England was not an impressive man; Jack had never thought so. His presence all came from
the clothes. He wore a rich purple suit, with a riding coat trimmed in thick fur. A medallion hung round his neck, the chain links golden. All of it was designed to impress, and to detract from the thin, permanently-surprised face. ‘Good. I would talk with you, lad.’ As he spoke, Norfolk’s eyes darted first up, then down, then side-to-side. They seemed to go anywhere but in the direction of Jack’s. ‘You have been in my service some time, I understand. In lowly degree.’

  ‘Yes, your Grace.’

  ‘Yes. And you have a wife?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Mm-hm. That is a fine thing, to be wed. A fine state. Enjoyed it myself and hope to again. But you have no children.’

  ‘None, my lord. Not … not yet.’

  ‘God give you some soon, then. A young married lad with a fair wife. You shall want advancement. All young men do.’ Norfolk nodded at the last, as though in confirmation of his words.

  Jack said nothing, lowering his head again. He wondered what might have brought about a sudden promotion. He’d done nothing save shovelling horse shit in the stables and occasionally bringing in the duke’s friends’ horses when no one more salubrious was available. A little sliver of excitement passed through him. Maybe the duke was going to travel abroad, and he wanted a team of horses and their boys. ‘I have in mind for you to move your service elsewhere. It is good that a young man with no ties should move around. Move up.’ Evidently the duke did not think of a wife as a tie. ‘Would you like that? Would you?’

  ‘I … you wish me to become a chiefer groom?’ A sudden crunch on the gravel announced Tom’s attitude to that idea.

  ‘What’s that, lad? Speak up!’ Jack repeated himself. ‘Yes, in a fashion. You are aware … you know of the earl of Shrewsbury?’

  Jack had heard of him: one of the richest men in England, by all accounts.

  ‘That fine lord has a great number of houses as fine as Arundel, and as great a number of horses. Houses even as fine as this.’ Norfolk’s arm rose under his cloak, the furs bristling, as he gestured in the direction of the palace. ‘I should think there’s a place for one such as you and your woman in his household.’

  Jack swallowed. Move to the service of another earl? Be thrown into another household? ‘Your Grace isn’t … uh, displeased with me?’ An iron fist clutched at his heart, turning his voice to a petulant squeak. He bore no particular love for the duke of Norfolk, but the thought of being cast out, unwanted, thrown away, was intolerable. It made him feel like an outsider. For a moment he imagined what the duke must see: a whiny boy. Colour crept into his cheeks in a rosy blush. He despised himself for begging - he’d always wanted to be off somewhere, to have a fresh new start, and here it was, in a way. And he was railing against it. Coward.

  ‘Not at all, lad. I mean to give you a chance – advancement. Though he is but an earl, he’s a fine one. And a privy councillor before January, if the rumour-mongers speak true.’ Norfolk’s voice changed; he began to sound like a frustrated schoolmaster, eager to be gentle but already weary of a particularly stupid student. He stopped. Hesitated. ‘And you shall still receive my favour. What you get by Shrewsbury … I shall continue to pay. But privately, you understand?’ Now he was a man-of-the-world sharing secrets with a lesser mortal. ‘You shall tell no one that you are my man. To all the world’s eyes and ears you are a gift from me to my friend; I send you with a fine horse and you and your woman are an annuity – a surplus to the gift.’

  Jack sensed that the duke was trying, in the way of a stupid man, to make a curse sound like a blessing. ‘All I ask,’ added Norfolk, ‘is that you keep me informed of what passes in my friend’s house. He is … he is to have a guest soon, in all likelihood … and I should very much like to correspond.’ His eyes were darting more furiously than ever. ‘If my letters should arrive … well, you shall see that they get to where they are meant to go. You will be rewarded. If you hold your peace. Do you understand me, la- Jack?’ Finally, he looked down at him directly and his narrow eyes blazed.

  ‘Yes, your Grace.’ It came out more sullenly than he had intended. He knew he had no choice. When the master commanded, the subject obeyed – it was the same the world over. He was being asked to shift himself and Amy from a comfortable place in a ducal household to the service of some other man, to spy and to make sure letters arrived for some other wealthy patron. All under the guise of being the gift attached to a fine horse. ‘Is that all, my lord?’

  ‘That is all, that is all - no more. Unless it haps that you discover anything there that you think it meet I should know, of course. But I leave that to your tender years to judge. Do you take my meaning?’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ lied Jack.

  ‘Capital,’ snorted Norfolk. He briefly reached out a gloved hand before retracting it, as though thinking better of touching a young servant. ‘Oh, ho!’ His hand found better service in a salute, aimed at someone else. Instinctively, Jack turned.

  Out of a path further down the edge of the park, another rider was emerging. It was the duke’s riding companion, the Scottish earl, Moray, followed by a brown-bearded retainer. Jack’s eyes were sharp. He could see that Moray’s brows drew together in irritation at being hallooed so publicly. The Scotsman managed a curt nod in Norfolk’s direction before turning away. His shoulders sloping, he pulled his hat low and rode away, gravel flying behind him.

  The duke said into the air, ‘a fine man for Scotland. Until its right ruler … Almost one of our own. Come, let us take our own leave of this place. You, boy, you can write your wife, wherever she is – you can write?’ He did not wait for an answer, even though Jack opened his mouth to speak. ‘And tell her to prepare herself to be presented to the earl. I understand she is one of my laundresses. Soon she might be laundress to that furtive fellow’s sister. Advancement, tell her.’

  ***

  ‘You know who he means?’ said Tom, his eyes popping out of his florid face.

  They were in the stables at Howard House, the great complex of buildings often still called the Charterhouse: the monastery it had once been. It was the first chance they had had to speak since Jack’s talk with the duke. Or the duke’s talk at him, he corrected himself. ‘The murderess! The Scotch murderess, that’s who he means. That Moray’s sister … it’s the queen of Scots, that’s who he’s writing to.’

  Jack kicked out at the rush matting and then flopped down on a felled and dressed tree trunk that had been converted into a bench. He flicked away his fringe before speaking. ‘So what? It’s not fair.’ Tom ignored him and he ignored Tom as they launched into two separate, one-sided conversations.

  ‘See, I wondered what he wanted with the Scotch-man. I thought he was done here. The wench’s trial will be over and she’ll be dead soon enough.’

  ‘I don’t see why I should have to go anywhere. Advancement. I got enough of that getting a place in the duke’s stables. I …’ he faltered. He had got into the duke’s stables by means of his father’s office in Norfolk’s household, lowly though it was, and he had promised himself long ago never to think of that old tyrant again. Dead and gone. He was glad Tom was barely listening; Tom, like everyone else, knew what his father was like. Instead, he said, ‘England’s meant to be liberty, not – not slavery. That’s what this is, slavery.’

  ‘But why send her to Shewsbury? Why not let her die the death here? Worried it’ll bring a rabble out, probably. Better to her keep her head a while yet until the dust settles. Reckon the Scotch don’t want her anymore. The French neither. Our master does but.’ Tom turned a sly look towards Jack. ‘My master, should say.’

  Jack thumped a fist on the bench and then drew his knees up. It was a childish gesture and a childish pose, but he didn’t care. He still felt like he was being kicked out. ‘I dunno what that face is all about, boy. I heard what he said. You’ll be getting paid twice.’

  ‘Pfft. What can I do with two men’s pay?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, I’ll go then! Ungrateful – you’re going to a rich lord an
d having your pockets doubly filled, and you look like you’ve just been kicked in the balls.’

  ‘I … I know my place here,’ said Jack. ‘I have …’ He was about to say ‘friends’ and closed his mouth. Tom knew his reputation better than that. No one wanted to be friends with the bland-faced moon man. He had tried, God knew, but he had mucked it up somehow. ‘I know where I am here.’ He knew the weakness of that, and he knew that Tom knew it.

  ‘You know where you are anywhere in England,’ sniffed Tom. ‘And skirts are skirts anywhere. You can make new fellows and chase new women.’

  The word drew Jack back. ‘And Amy – what am I supposed to tell Amy?’ Tom shrugged, as though that was unimportant.

  ‘That she can dunk some other folks’ piss-stewed bedsheets in another river. What does that matter? You’re married five minutes and you’re already pecked by thoughts of your wench?’

  Jack gave a sour look up at the portly old man in front of him. He knew Amy was just an excuse. They barely knew one another – they had only been married the previous April. He had proposed because she was pretty and made him feel liked, and she said yes because … he supposed because she really did want and love him. What was important was that she had freshly come up from the country and he could be anything he wanted to be with her. A poet; a warrior; a hero brimming with confidence; a jack-the-lad. She was – she is, he thought – an open book in which he could write his own story.

  Tom folded a towel, laid it on the floor and placed some brushes on top of it. Then he sat down too. He reached to the floor and picked up a loose piece of straw, inspecting it as though it were a joint of meat before popping an end in his mouth and chewing. ‘Look here,’ he said at length, settling a hand on his round stomach. ‘You’re young yet. All life is about moving around. It’s like …’ he struggled, looking around the cavernous stable. ‘It’s like we’re all horses, us lot. Some run wild in the fields and starve in winter. Others get mastered, and polished up, and made good. But we go where our masters direct us, see? We don’t run wild. And sometimes they give us away, or what-have-you. And by-and-by we accept it. Cos if we don’t, we’ll have to run wild, and starve, and go without shoes. So don’t worry. Think on what you’re getting, not what you’re losing. A new start. You can let all the old shit be shovelled clean away. All of it. A chance to be where no one knows anything about …’ He trailed off.