A Dangerous Trade: An Elizabethan Spy Thriller

by Steven Veerapen

  3

  The people of London hated working, it seemed. There were days to go until the first of Christmas, and already it seemed a fever of festivity had infected the people. In country households the revelries during the festive period jigged onwards, but someone was always doing the cleaning. In Norfolk’s household they took turns. One day the laundresses would drink sack, and each have a bite of a fruit tart whilst the stable lads swept up; the next day the stable lads would pass around ale and put their feet up whilst the laundresses served them. In the city, business started to grind to a halt and the middens began overflowing even before the festive season properly began.

  Jack led Amy through a tribe of masked men thronging Aldersgate Street. ‘Ho, fellow, what a horse!’ called up the leader. The mask was black. It seemed you couldn’t set foot outside in London without being accosted. Whether they were brigands or simply young lawyers practising their festive foolery a few days early was unclear.

  ‘Thank you,’ nodded Jack.

  ‘And what a wench.’ Jack crimsoned, knowing he should say something valiant, defend his wife’s honours. Instead he said, ‘right, let us pass. We’re on business.’

  ‘There’s no business on a holiday!’

  ‘The duke has business every day.’ He took advantage of the brief conference the duke of Norfolk’s name brought to urge the horse forward, turning to make sure Amy was behind him. She was, and she didn’t look put out.

  ‘Ho, you owe us passage,’ shouted the leader of the masquers. ‘It’s tradition – you owe us!’

  ‘We owe you the sight of our horse’s arses,’ shouted back Amy.

  ‘You … a stranger-bitch with fire in her guts!’

  They didn’t follow, moving on to unmounted marks. Jack kept his head down as he rode forward; Amy held hers high. ‘You’re not sad about missing the revels, are you?’ he asked her, feeling the need to say something.

  ‘More than a week of making merry with folk I already have to look in the face every single day? No, thank you.’ He turned ahead again, pleased by her impish smile.

  The pair had been commanded to meet with the earl of Shrewsbury’s train on the Aldersgate, where it met Pickaxe Street. The large group could be heard before they could be seen, and when they did rise into view, it was as a palette of colours. Some men and women were mounted, others were wading through the muck and passing around tankards. At the head of the procession was a sturdy-looking little man, leaning down from his horse to converse with a slighter, lankier figure.

  Jack led Amy towards the group and resisted a smile as the white stallion drew gasps and slight cheers. He drew level with the line of men and women and fumbled in his breast pocket for his letter. Or had he stowed it in the pocket hanging from his belt? No, it was between his shirt and doublet. He was still digging when the lanky man detached himself from his conversation and skipped lightly through the mire towards him.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked through his nostrils. He wore a livery with the earl’s badge prominent – the outfit of a secretary or official of the household.

  ‘I come from his Grace the duke of Norfolk,’ said Jack, trying consciously to deepen his voice. ‘I have been commanded to bring this horse for your master as a token of his Grace’s deep affection. His … his deep affection towards the earl.’ Damn it, he though; he had started out so well.

  ‘Is that so?’ The man’s eyes ran greedily over the horse. It stood stock-still, almost seeming aware of its breeding and value. ‘I am Woodward – Thomas Woodward – the earl’s steward. You have some writing from the duke?’

  ‘Yep – yes, I do.’ Jack fished out the letter and handed it over. Woodward took it without looking at it. Instead he studied Jack with detachment. An awkward silence fell between them, neither man sure exactly what to say. Eventually Woodward broke it.

  ‘My master will be most thankful. Can I help you down from the brute? I fear the earl does not have the duke’s gift … here … he had planned to send it on the first. He is only returning to Chatsworth for a brief spell to see the countess – he will be back at court after Twelfth Night.’

  ‘Begging your pardon, Mr Woodward, but it’s in the letter that my wife and I are to go with the horse. We’re to join the earl’s household. I am a master horseman and my wife a laundress. It’s … it’s in the letter,’ he repeated lamely.

  ‘What? I … I wasn’t told. More servants, more? The earl’s household does seem to be getting busy this day. Ugh…’ Something in the man’s tired, thin face seemed to give. ‘Ah, well - if anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. So says the gospel of John.’

  ‘What is this, Thomas?’ cut in a new voice. It was the man who had been mounted before Woodward had come down the line towards Jack. With surprise Jack realised it must be the earl of Shrewsbury. He was a man of about forty, his hair receding at the front but only on either side of a wispy fringe which hung doggedly down his forehead. He had more the look of a friendly merchant than a magnate, and he stood in the muddy road with his hands clasped behind his back as he leant forward: the pose of an older man. ‘A fine, fine horse,’ he said, warmth radiating from his eyes.

  Woodward passed him the letter, his head bowed. He slipped open the seal and read aloud. The duke had written that Jack was a master horse keeper and Shrewsbury emphasised the words with a questioning inflection. Then he smiled again, a little wearily, and said, ‘you are welcome to my household then, Jack Cole. And Mrs Cole. I hope you will give me good service and for my part I will reward it. I’m afraid I have a master of horse, but … yes – Mr Woodward, you are worthy enough of your own horse man. Mr Cole here can be your man, in name at least. Until he has proven himself.’ Then again, ‘what a fine, fine horse.’ Jack felt awkwardness envelope him. He liked Shrewsbury instantly, and yet knew he might be required to do things under the old chap’s nose. Further, although he had removed his hat, he was aware that he was sitting mounted whilst his new master stood in the muck. Monstrous fish and two-headed calves swam and skipped briefly through his mind.

  ‘Well, let us be off,’ said Shrewsbury, clapping his hands together. ‘I have promised my wife in faith that I would be with her before Christmas Day. Woodward, see to my new people. See that they are well tended on the road.’ He gave the horse one last lingering look and then strode back towards the front of the group.

  ‘Right. Well.’ The steward looked behind him to the departing back of Shrewsbury. ‘As a rule I should say I don’t like female servants. You did say you are married? Properly, in the eyes of God?’

  ‘We are, sir.’

  ‘Yes. Good. Well then, you are come from a great house. You know the rules. It’s for your woman to see to such menial work as might be required. Mr Cole, you know your duty. Be ever ready with good answer, ready to serve, and gentle of cheer. So that men may say “there goes a fine officer”. Be courteous of knee, soft of speech, keep your hands clean and nails – take care of the earl’s livery when you have it. Do not cough or spit too loudly and keep your fingers out of your ears and nose. Keep your countenance fair at all times and above all, young man, do not lie. Ever.

  ‘You, Cole, you can ride abreast with Mr …’ he paused, biting on a lip as though he couldn’t quite remember, his mind so filled with his new recruit speech. ‘Mr Heydon. Your wife can ride with the laundresses. At the back. We must move now to make the most of the day. I shall have to find some place for you at Chatsworth when we get there. Of course, you realise that it might be a tight fit. We were given leave to expect a horse, not the servants with it.’ His lip curled downwards in silent rebuke at the last. ‘Still,’ he added grudgingly, ‘I extend you our master’s welcome.’ With that he turned on his heel and loped after the earl.

  ‘Well,’ called Amy over the noise of the street, ‘that’s us told.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack, turning in his seat. ‘You go with the women at the back.’ As she nudged her little horse towards them, Jack thought: wh
o the hell is Heydon? He began asking around until eventually he was pointed towards a man his own age, clean-shaven and dressed in grey. ‘Mr Heydon?’

  ‘That’s me.’ The inflection of his voice was strange; there was something flat and unaccented in it. He sat his horse with one hand on his hip, the other holding the bridle as though it were a napkin and he at a grand dining table. Cropped brown hair showed under a plumed hat, and a silvery-black short cloak was pinned at one shoulder.

  ‘Mr …’ Shit, thought Jack. He had only just heard the steward’s name and already it was out of his mind. ‘The earl’s steward said I’m to ride with you.’

  ‘Good – I was getting worried I’d have no one to talk to all the way north.’ Heydon gave him a long look up and down and then something seemed to break, light pouring into his face. It transformed him. ‘Well then, we might as well be friends. Call me Philip.’

  ‘Philip – I’m Jack. Jack Cole.’

  ‘Well, Jack Cole, that’s some horse you have there.’

  ‘A gift from the duke of Norfolk,’ he beamed, his chest expanding.

  ‘I see. And you?’

  ‘A gift from the duke of Norfolk,’ said Jack, and both men laughed. There was something freeing in laughter, something that put one at ease. ‘I’m newly come to help with the horses.’

  ‘So, a new man. Well then, you and I will get along just fine. Come, fall into line and you can tell me about yourself.’

  ‘I’d rather hear about this household. Since I’m a new man. You know, who to watch out for, who’s fierce and that. What do you do?’

  ‘I’m … a secretary. Ha – nah, man, that sounds too grand. No, I’m a man of letters, really. I can tutor in the classics and write, stamp, and seal.’ Jack had the vague impression he was being read the man’s wares. Privately he wondered why the earl of Shrewsbury would require a tutor; perhaps he had children. As though answering his thought, Heydon said, ‘There was some trouble with the countess’s old tutor. Well, her children’s old tutor. He left. Left a gap for a gentleman to fill, though the children are now off into the world. Every great house can do with a spare reader and scribe. See, my old man, gentleman he was, he wanted me reared in a noble house. To learn the ways of England, he said – the old ways. But I was a rakehell of a lad and went off my own way. But better late than never – and the earl never refuses a northern man of good name. How about you – you a married man?’

  ‘I am that. Wife’s riding with the women.’

  ‘I see.’ Heydon looked vaguely down the line of people before turning back to Jack and dropping his voice. ‘I’m acting as a secretary but hoping for better things.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’

  ‘All what?’

  ‘Hoping for better things.’

  ‘I suppose so. What do you hope for, Jack? What do you and your wife hope for?’

  Jack thought for a moment. He considered parroting the usual lines about providing good service and being a good and honest man. Instead he said, ‘I dunno. I’d like to travel one day.’

  ‘Oh, travel. I’ve travelled. It’s a rare thing.’

  ‘Where? Where to?’

  ‘Everywhere. You name a place and I’ll tell you if I’ve been there.’

  ‘I don’t … France?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve been to Paris. The Sorbonne, the student quarter. Good wine, but some of those students and their foolish ideas … But the women.’ He clicked gloved fingers, giving no sound. ‘Not like here. Not half so timid. Where else?’

  ‘Italy!’

  ‘Italy,’ said Heydon, his eyes clouding. ‘You don’t ask much, do you? Haha – yes, I’ve trod the Via Appia Antica once or twice. Is that where you’d like to go?’

  ‘I dunno. Haven’t thought that far ahead. The world. The whole wide world. That’s where I’d like to see. Not just England, I mean.’

  ‘There’s a fine thought,’ said Heydon. ‘I share a bit of that myself still. The fever for travel still rages, though I’ve done it aplenty – grows hotter, in fact. Well it’s natural, isn’t it, that young fellows should want to see all the noise and the hurly-burly of the wide world. To furrow our oats in foreign ground and yield to God and fortune.’

  ‘God and fortune,’ echoed Jack. He liked the sound of that. ‘Yep, a fine thought, like you say.’

  ‘You’ll get a bellyful of God from Woodward,’ smiled Heydon. ‘Likes his Bible. They all call him the preacher.’ Jack filed that away: a nickname for his master might make Amy laugh. Then he frowned at the thought of having to listen to sermons endlessly. Heydon seemed to read his face. ‘Oh, don’t worry; I’m not like that. No, no, no. No time for hot gospelling.’ Something intense seemed to fire up the man’s eyes. ‘I reckon you wouldn’t find that out in the wide world, eh?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Jack. His smile, he knew, had become fixed. The conversation was already drowning him.

  ‘Well let’s not turn down that path. Look here, we’re moving out. Make tracks, beast!’ Heydon’s horse refused to move. ‘Would you look at that? A horse who says nay and means it.’

  Jack laughed. He leant over and clapped the horses rear, which made it stumble forward. Heydon smiled an embarrassed smile and Jack silently recorded the weak joke in his mind. He might be able to pass it off as his own if he ever needed to be witty.

  And so they were off. The cavalcade had picked up on the earl’s lead and begun to trot forwards in unison. Tankards were hastily placed in saddle bags and the murmur of conversation changed in pitch as people began to focus on avoiding the more miry patches of ground. Behind them London fell away, and the poor came out to grab at the horses and cry up for alms.

  Jack Cole began to think that the new life he hadn’t asked for and had only dreamily wanted might just be the start of something good after all.

  ***

  At the back of the little procession of animals, men, and women, Amy had joined her fellow female servants. There were few of them; most women had apparently remained with the countess whilst a small team had accompanied the earl to do the menial tasks. Mostly they were matrons. That was her lot now and she welcomed it. Better to have a little status as a married matron than be a feather-brained girl amongst feather-brained girls. Still, it was to her disappointment that, as the earl’s people moved out, the almost-offensively polite women servants seemed to have no inclination to talk about anything other than her husband. Some women, she thought, seemed to wish to talk about nothing else when they got together than men.

  She dutifully answered questions in as vague a manner as she could; it wouldn’t do to get her new colleagues’ backs up. However, as she made answers like, ‘Jack wishes to be a good and honest servant to the earl’; ‘no, the duke was a kind and good master, as will be the earl’; and ‘no, we heard nothing about the Scotch queen or her husband in the duke’s household’, her mind sharpened and focused elsewhere.

  At first, she thought it was her imagination. The road out of London was bound to be well-travelled and busy, especially when everyone seemed to be ducking work. But no, the further they rode, as the buildings fell away to open fields, the surer she became. Someone was following them.

  She had spotted the fellow out the corner of her eye when they had waited to move out from Aldersgate: it was his costume which drew her. He was swathed in dark dun, the colour of mud; a rough brown hat hid his upper features, and a brown scarf buried his lower ones. He had been lurking between two buildings, peering out at them. When they had moved off, she had thought him to have been no more than a thief awaiting a chance. If he was, he was a persistent one. And he had a horse.

  At the troupe moved northwards towards Derbyshire, the man in brown followed, never actually joining them, never passing them, and always seeming to pause when the earl’s steward called a rest. She considered telling the other women; she couldn’t tell the steward or any other man, for they would not listen. But the women seemed lost in their own chatter about London; about their husbands; about chil
dren growing up; about how prettily Chatsworth was coming to be; and, when excitement overtook them, about the mysterious Scottish queen and whether she would live or die. And so the man followed.

  It was an unsettling feeling. She began to wonder exactly what kind of frightening and ill-portended life she and Jack might have been thrust into.

  4

  Chatsworth was not Arundel. It was not Howard House, or Hampton Court, or even Nonsuch Palace. It was something different and something new. It had the word ‘modernity’ built into its stone and timbers. It was the newness that appealed to Jack as the earl and his servants led the way into the straight, square-fronted building’s courtyard on Christmas Eve. Scaffolding stood about, abandoned in the late afternoon darkness. Shrewsbury was helped down from his horse and immediately vanished into the house, apparently eager to be reunited with his wife. The servants began to dismount and disperse. Well, thought Jack, this was it. A new start.

  The few days’ ride out of London had been an illuminating one. At each rest stop he was reunited with Amy as the pair slept together on pallets in the inns the earl commandeered, but during the ride he was side-by-side with Philip Heydon. His new friend – and friend he really seemed to be – had regaled him with stories of his adventures abroad and promised Jack that one day they would go out and see the world together. Like brothers, he had said. He had told him also of the Shrewsburys: how they were very much in love; how the countess’s children from a previous marriage were betrothed to the earl’s; and how it was all but confirmed that the loving couple would soon have custody of the Scottish queen. He seemed dismayed that Jack had no opinion on the Scottish queen and dropped hints that he would soon know her better – they all would. Only when Heydon asked about Norfolk and Jack’s role as a horse keeper did the latter grow evasive. Taking the hint, Heydon always turned the subject back to more innocuous things. It was a nice feeling to have a friend. Hitherto Jack had only known older men who spoke down to him or men his own age who scorned him as two-faced and double-dealing when he tried to show friendship equally to all.