A Fine Madness

by Alan Judd

  ‘No more preaching for him now,’ I said to Christopher.

  ‘I’d give my thirty pieces to hear him again. He speaks so well.’

  ‘Just as well you won’t, then. He might have persuaded you.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do that, but will he live? Might he be spared?’

  ‘No. He preached sedition. He would have had Her Majesty murdered.’

  ‘All in the name of God.’ He nodded as if agreeing with something I had said. ‘Yet not evil. Just wrong, almost admirably wrong.’

  ‘You don’t regret what you did?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not yet.’

  Christopher was in Cambridge during the months of Campion’s confinement and racking. Thus he did not hear the public debates Campion was permitted with the deans of Westminster and St Paul’s. Some said afterwards that if he had repented on those occasions he might yet have saved himself, though I doubt it. Anyway, he preferred a martyr’s death. I saw him hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on the first of December that year. He died as well as a man may in that manner. When the executioner burned the offal I saw his kidney sizzling in the ashes and gave a boy a penny to pluck it out. I have it still on my desk at home, as hard as a nut.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I cannot tell you much about Christopher’s life during the next few years. I saw little of him. He was in Cambridge and I in London or France. He was one of what Mr Secretary called our pigeons, occasional couriers whom we trusted with confidential letters. They had no idea of the contents nor sometimes of the identities of recipients unless they were well-known gentlemen such as ambassadors. Christopher travelled to Antwerp for us at least once, as well as to Paris. It was one of the letters he brought from Paris in 1586 that ignited the powder train culminating in the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, though he had no idea of it at the time. Nor later, I suspect. Agents often never know the parts they play.

  Our quarry then was Thomas Morgan, Mary’s chief intelligencer, a Welshman living and plotting in Paris. He was determined to put Mary on the throne of England. Mary, of course, had been held here for many years following her flight from Scotland amid mayhem and tales of murder. But surely, sir, King James must know his mother’s history as well as any man can? He would not wish me to rehearse for him the details of her end?

  Very well, in outline. Morgan and Mary maintained a secret correspondence which it was our daily endeavour to intercept. But we were having little luck laying our hands on any of it. Her living and breathing here was as a stone in the national bladder, as Mr Secretary put it, a rival who threatened not only our Queen but our Protestant settlement. As a Catholic who had been nourished in the French Court she had no love for England. Nor was she wanted in Scotland, which was rightfully hers, but men like Morgan worked to persuade her that England too was rightfully hers if only her usurping cousin Elizabeth could be removed. Whether she willed it or no – and, to be frank with you, I suspect she did not at first will it as she did later, when tossed upon the seas of misfortune – she became the standard-bearer for Catholic discontent, the focus of hopes and plots. Not all of which she knew about. It was a constant fear of the Privy Council that Queen Elizabeth would be murdered as the Pope had urged, or would sicken and die, for then Mary would take the throne, the French or Spanish would invade and England and the true Godly religion would be done for.

  But Thomas Morgan was our immediate quarry, the key to any serious threats. He came from Llantarnam and was very Welsh in speech – in those days I could take him off to the life and was sometimes asked to do so when Mr Secretary was entertaining. Although a Catholic he was made secretary to the Archbishop of York but, not content with privately confessing his creed, he schemed to force it upon the nation and so was removed to the Tower for some years. After release he removed himself to Paris where he continued to plot against Her Majesty. William Parry, the would-be regicide whose trial and execution we had wrought the year before, confessed that Morgan persuaded him to it.

  Morgan’s secret correspondence with Mary comprised packets of letters delivered to the house of the French ambassador in Salisbury Court, off Fleet Street. They were conveyed thence to Staffordshire where Mary was kept under guard by Sir Amias Paulet, who had been ambassador to Paris. We knew of this traffic but not of what it consisted nor the identities of couriers. Then, towards the end of 1585, Christopher returned to London with letters from Paris, among which was one from an agent of ours, Nicholas Berden. He was one of our best, the son of a London merchant who became a merchant in France and traded in all manner of goods. He was a Catholic but a loyal one, without political or religious ambitions and content to serve Queen Elizabeth as our lawful monarch. He did not wish to see England under foreign rule and reported frequently to me by letter, under various of my cover names, telling us of the aspirations of English Catholics in France who strove to put Mary on the throne. He was a diligent and productive reporter and we saw to it that plentiful trade was sent his way.

  The letter delivered by Christopher in early December 1585 was in one of several packets bringing news that Pope Sixtus V had pronounced another excommunication upon Her Majesty as a bastard heretic schismatic whom it was the duty of any Catholic to murder. The letter told us that this new papal bull was to be smuggled into England by one Gilbert Gifford who would land at Rye under another name and distribute the bill among the underground priesthood here. When Christopher arrived with it I was in Whitehall working on Spanish ciphers and was summoned to receive him downstairs. He was tired, his pale face reddened and roughened by the sea like any sailor’s. He had boarded a boat for Dover but the winds were contrary and they were buffeted days and nights before finally making landfall at Rye.

  ‘I should not be sorry never to go to sea again,’ he said.

  Had he landed at Dover he would have spent the night at his home in Canterbury but now he felt he should return to Cambridge without seeing his family. The college authorities had already complained about his absences.

  ‘But they remain ignorant of what you are about?’

  ‘Of course. They wouldn’t complain otherwise.’

  I suggested he rested in Whitehall awhile and then spent the night at Mr Secretary’s house. I sent out for food and drink and promised to accompany him there later. Then I retired to open the packets and decode Nicholas Berden’s letter. From that, and from a note scribbled hastily upon it, I realised that Christopher must have seen the man Gifford in Paris. I went down to him again when he had eaten. We sat on a long bench away from others where we could talk privately.

  ‘Where were you when you were given the packets by the man you met?’ He did not know Berden’s name.

  ‘Behind Notre Dame, on the point of the island, as instructed.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘The same as last time: “Greetings, Mr Noakes, what brings you here?” And I say, “I seek food for thought.” And he says, “In that case, I have some sweetmeats for you.” That is supposed to signify that neither of us suspects we are being watched.’ He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t mean we weren’t, of course.’

  ‘He said nothing else?’

  ‘No. Well, not then.’ He yawned and scratched his stubble. ‘We walked for a while by the river, speaking of trade as if we were in business together. Except that when we passed a stall selling fruit he told me to look well at a man buying some. “You may see that man when you sail,” he said. “Have nothing to do with him.” When I asked why he said, “I may not tell you but if you hear him say his name, report it when you deliver your letters. But do not speak to him yourself.” ’

  ‘Did you hear his name?’

  ‘No. We didn’t travel together. He wasn’t on the boat. I never saw him again.’

  ‘Would you know him if you saw him?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ His gaze focused as if on a painting on the wall opposite. ‘He has curls, fair curls, and blue eyes.’

  This glimpse of Christopher’s meant that his return to college was furt
her delayed. When I reported it to Sir Francis he despatched a rider to Rye forthwith with orders that any man of Gifford’s description landing from France should be detained. He then ordered that I should post to Rye with Christopher the next morning to identify Gifford. We were to wait for up to a week. I was not best pleased by this for I had had my fill of travel and a hectic journey through the heavy clinging clay of Sussex tracks was not to my liking. Sometimes it was quicker to take ship down the Thames and round the coast, but not with the winds we had then. Nor was Christopher best pleased to retrace the steps he had so recently and wearily made. But there was no gainsaying Mr Secretary.

  The journey was long, wet and wearing. We stayed the night in a wretched inn south of Tonbridge where the fleas persecuted us mightily. It was better when we reached Rye and put up at the Mermaid, a commodious establishment serving plentiful fish and good mutton from the Romney Marsh. The harbourmaster assured us that his searchers had been alerted to look for anyone of Gifford’s description but that there had been none on the last two vessels from France, both diverted like Christopher’s from Dover. The sea was still surly and the wind fitful; local vessels did not venture far from the shore. We were there two days with nothing to do except to explore the small town, waiting and watching as is so often the way in our profession.

  We must have talked a good deal but I am afraid I cannot now recall much of what we said. I do remember that Christopher was always keen to hear of life at Court and of the doings of the great men there. Although I dwelt but in the suburbs of that world, I knew some of its denizens and heard much about it from casual gossip. I’m sure he also spoke about Ovid and probably about his own ambitions in poetry and theatre, but I recall nothing of it.

  Actors, you say? Actors he was fond of? Did he mention any? Not that I recall.

  Anyway, late afternoon on the second day we heard there was a ship sighted off the harbour mouth. We hurried down to the quay and saw a vessel labouring in heavy seas, making slow progress. One of the searchers recognised it as a French vessel out of Rouen. When it finally made it to the quay we stood back among the tall net huts to watch the people come ashore. Some poor souls could barely walk and had to be helped, all the others were unsteady on their legs, staggering like drunken men. They looked exhausted and a few simply sat on their bundles, heads bowed between their knees until they found strength to offer thanks to God for their deliverance. Among the first to recover was a tall man with curly fair hair and a short beard.

  Christopher touched my arm. ‘That’s him, that’s your man.’

  I gave the word to one of the searchers and we hid behind the netting sheds while Gifford was arrested. He was to be taken under military guard to London for interrogation. Our task accomplished, we left the soldiers to it and spent a final night in the Mermaid, with a fine mutton pie. I do remember what we talked about during that dinner, however.

  It began with him saying, ‘Can you remember why Judas did it?’

  He spoke as if we’d just been discussing Judas. But we hadn’t, not since Christopher’s mention of him at the time of the Lyford Grange affair. ‘Of course. For thirty pieces of silver.’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re no better than the Papists, you don’t know your Bible. You should study more. Do you not recall what Mark says? He says that while Jesus and the disciples sat at meat at the house of Simon the leper a woman came and anointed Jesus with spikenard, a very precious ointment. And the disciples were indignant at the waste, pointing out that the ointment could have been sold and the money given to the poor. But Jesus rebuked them, saying, “For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good; but me ye have not always.” Immediately after that Judas went to the Pharisees and offered up Jesus. He accepted the thirty pieces of silver they give him but clearly that’s not really why he did it. He did it because of Jesus’s self-aggrandisement, His intoxication with Himself and His mission, contrary to the message He had been preaching about relieving suffering and helping the poor. Contrary, too, to His insistence on poverty for His disciples, that they must give up all they have to follow Him. He had grown above Himself. He was becoming a Caesar.’

  Blasphemy shocked me in those days. I urged him to quieten himself lest we both find ourselves at the stake. It was especially shocking that he smiled, as if it were all a joke. But he would not be quiet. ‘Then, of course, Judas betrayed him with a kiss, he was seized and as he was taken away a young man followed, wearing only a linen cloth. They seized him too but he escaped and ran away naked, leaving his linen cloth behind. Unlike our man today, who had no such enthusiastic followers and no chance to run away, thanks to us. What do you think these details mean, why does Mark give them?’ He drank his beer, keeping his eyes on mine.

  ‘I don’t know. Anyway, Judas hanged himself.’

  ‘Indeed he did. But only after returning the money. What does that tell us?’

  ‘That he felt guilty.’

  ‘For betraying his friend or for taking money for it?’

  ‘Both, surely.’

  ‘And what if he hadn’t felt guilty? What would he have done then?’

  ‘Kept the money and spent it.’

  ‘In which case he’d have deserved to hang, having betrayed Jesus for his own greed. But it wasn’t greed, was it? He returned the money. The reason he betrayed Jesus was surely Jesus’s own self-aggrandisement.’

  ‘You should be a preacher, Christopher. But you couldn’t preach that. You’d be burned for it.’

  He smiled again. ‘You wouldn’t like anything I’d preach. No one would.’

  I was troubled by that. I had inklings of what he was getting at, of course, but openly free-thinking, atheistical speculation was something I had never encountered. Heresies I knew about, and various perversions of the gospel truth, but this was different. It continued to trouble me and during our long ride back to London I spoke of it again. ‘You seem obsessed by Judas. Do you fear that in what you do for us you resemble him? Even though you agree that we rightly protect the true Godly religion and the security of the state? You don’t disagree with that?’

  ‘But that’s just how Judas would have thought, minus the security of the state. He must have thought he was acting to save the true Godly religion. He’d have said he joined the movement to help the poor, which is true to Old Testament teaching, and because he believed Jesus when He said that heaven was at hand. Instead of which He who proclaimed Himself the Son of God was now betraying the poor through His extravagance and self-glorification.’

  ‘But something must trouble you about Judas. You mention him often.’

  We were approaching Sevenoaks and the chimneys of the great house of Knole had just come into view. ‘What troubles me is not that people might compare me with Judas,’ he said. ‘I doubt the comparison occurs to anyone but me and even I don’t find it close enough to worry about. Unless I’ve betrayed Jesus without knowing it?’ He shook his head and continued slowly. ‘No, what troubles me is something closer to home, something of myself.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  We stopped. We had almost crested the wooded hill leading up to Sevenoaks when from the trees to our right came a sudden wailing, a girl’s voice begging and pleading. There was a track leading into the trees and Christopher, without waiting for me, prodded his horse along it. I followed and soon we rounded a bend to see a rough-looking fellow wearing a torn jerkin dragging a young girl by her hair. She stumbled behind him, bent low, fighting, struggling and screaming, clutching alternately at her hair and at passing bushes and branches. She had dirty bare feet and wore sackcloth that had seen better days. The only word I could make out from her screaming was ‘home’, which she kept repeating. Christopher halted his horse, handed the reins to me and leapt from it, making for the man. As he ran he hitched his knife from the back of his belt to the front.

  Seeing us, the man stopped and turned, still holding the girl by her long brown hair. Sh
e had quietened but remained bent double because of the way he held her.

  ‘Let go of her!’ Christopher shouted, his voice echoing in the wooded stillness. The man shouted something back but I couldn’t tell what. Christopher stopped running about ten yards from the man, walked slowly up to him as if to parley and then struck him full in the face. The man let go of the girl’s hair and staggered back, shocked and disbelieving, bleeding profusely from the nose. He stared for a moment, then turned and ran and was quickly out of sight in the trees. Christopher did not give chase but stood looking after him.

  The girl dropped to her knees when the man let go of her hair, the sackcloth riding up over her great bare buttocks. Then she too got up and fled without a word. As she brushed past my horse I glimpsed a round, foolish dirty face with the wide loose-lipped mouth and staring eyes of a village idiot.

  We had no more of Judas on that journey. We discussed the incident, whether the man was abducting the girl or whether he was a father dragging his wayward daughter home. Christopher hadn’t thought of that. ‘He looked a villain,’ he said. ‘That’s why I didn’t wait to parley with him.’

  ‘You looked as if you enjoy a fight.’

  ‘I do. I am not a big enough man to seek a fight but I enjoy it when it comes.’

  ‘What do you enjoy about it?’

  ‘The infliction of justified pain.’ He glanced at me. ‘And you? I imagine you don’t like to fight?’

  ‘My build does not incline me to brawling.’

  ‘You are wiser perhaps than me, Thomas.’

  He was paid what he insisted on calling his thirty pieces when we reached London. He then made his way to Cambridge, where doubtless he had to give the authorities some excuse for his absence. It was a lapse on my part not to have thought of that. We should have concocted an explanation that would have satisfied them. There would then have been no need for the Privy Council’s letter, with which you will recall I began this long account. It is no excuse to say you cannot think of everything when, in considering the security of intelligence agents, it is your responsibility to think of everything.