by Ann Swinfen
‘Only by keeping a constant vigil, Kit, and we grow old.’
Unconsciously he was echoing my very thoughts earlier in the day. He laid his hand on my shoulder.
‘We shall not always be here, and then it will be for the next generation to assume the care of the nation.’ He paused, and his glance shifted to the open windows, through which faint sounds drifted from the busy Customs House and quays.
‘As for Frances and little Elizabeth . . . it is time to be looking for a new husband for my daughter and a father for her child.’
As I walked along the corridor to Phelippes’s room, I wondered about those last words. Would Frances Walsingham have any choice in the matter? The alliances of great families must take more into account than the personal feelings of their individual members. Sir Francis had nearly beggared himself, paying off the debts of his son-in-law, Sir Philip Sydney, and giving him a funeral fit for a monarch. There would be little enough left of his estate to leave to Frances, his only child. How ill was he? If he thought death was approaching, he would want her safely married to a man who could give her position and financial security. It was said that the Queen had been angered at the original marriage, between Frances Walsingham and Philip Sydney, but then she often took against marriages she had not arranged herself. Sir Francis would want a man of similar rank for his daughter’s second husband. I wondered who he had in mind.
‘Kit!’ Phelippes rose from his chair, seeming glad to see me. He was not a demonstrative man, but he smiled warmly and welcomed me in to the familiar office where I had spent so many hours pouring over obscure coded letters in the last three years. I looked around. There were my own table and chair. On the wall behind, the shelf where I kept my keys to the various codes, my spare quills and ink, and the seal Arthur Gregory had made for me last year.
‘Have you come back to work for us?’ Phelippes said. ‘You cannot have enjoyed your little adventure away from us.’
I felt that ‘little adventure’ would not be my own description of the horrors we had endured, but perhaps the whole disaster had little reality for Phelippes, cooped up here with his documents.
‘Sir Francis said I should speak to you about whether you had work for me. I am no longer employed at St Bartholomew’s.’
Once again I explained what had happened to my father. And as with Sir Francis, I did not mention where I was living at present. I had no tangible reason for this. Merely I felt that the less mention there was of Ruy Lopez at the moment, the better for all concerned, particularly me.
‘Well,’ Phelippes said, ‘as you see, matters are under control at the moment.’
He tapped a neat stack of papers with the end of his quill. Indeed, the room was not sinking under its usual load of documents waiting for decipherment.
‘However, I am expecting another consignment shortly,’ he went on. ‘There are one or two new stirrings amongst the Spaniards, some new despatches . . . ah . . . diverted . . . as they came through France. I expect I could use some assistance in the next week or two. How can I reach you?’
Still reluctant to mention my address, I said, ‘Suppose I call here in a week’s time? Then perhaps you will know better what you may need.’
‘That will do very well. Take a holiday.’
I grimaced. ‘I have had too much holiday since I’ve been back in London. However, I’ve a wedding to attend this month, and perhaps I’ll look in at Bartholomew Fair.’
‘Bartholomew Fair?’ He gave a reminiscent smile. ‘I haven’t been there since I was a young lad. My mother used to take me with my little sister. There was a woman who sold the most wonderful gilded gingerbread. I was a greedy rascal and ate mine up at once, but my sister used to treasure hers – a castle, a knight in armour, a mermaid. She could not bear to eat them, but kept them until they turned soft or the mice found them.’
I was astonished. Thomas Phelippes had never mentioned his family to me before. It was hard to imagine him as a small boy, gobbling up his gingerbread while walking through the Fair.
‘Does your sister still hoard her gingerbread?’ I was emboldened to ask.
He shook his head sadly. ‘Nay, she died of a raging fever when she was just twelve years old. We never went to Bartholomew Fair again.’
‘I’m so sorry, Thomas,’ I said. I seemed to hear of nothing but the death of children today.
‘It was many years ago.’ He sighed. ‘I never valued her as I should until it was too late. But the Fair – only a few weeks away. A happy time for cutpurses and confidence tricksters.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘but a good time, as well, for the common people to enjoy themselves before the end of summer. And important for all the cloth merchants. Their booths are so numerous they block the way into the hospital. And now that the Spanish have been chased out of the Channel, at least for a time, there will be merchants there from the Continent. It should prove profitable for the guilds of London.’
‘You are right. The legitimate business of the Fair was always the trade in cloth, and after the losses in the Portuguese expedition, there will be many hoping to make a good profit. And the other trades too, metalwork, jewellery.’
‘Leatherwork,’ I said. ‘I know a family of leatherworkers who have taken a stall for the first time. Last year, with the invasion, no one could think of trade, but this year it is another matter.’
I glanced towards the door to Arthur Gregory’s small cubicle.
‘Is Arthur not about?’ I said.
‘Gone to fetch some special fine-grained wood he needs for his seals,’ Phelippes said. ‘He will be sorry to have missed you.’
He asked me about the expedition, but he was mainly interested in the escape of Titus Allanby, one of Walsingham’s own agents.
‘It was unfortunate that you were not able to secure the release of Hunter from the prison in Lisbon,’ he said.
‘There were many things which were much more unfortunate than that,’ I said grimly. ‘Besides, Hunter seems to be accommodated in a fair degree of comfort, and to have valuable sources of information about the Spanish. Is he not of more use to Sir Francis where he is?’
‘Perhaps, perhaps.’
I left soon afterwards and collected Rikki from the stableyard.
‘Will you be coming back to us then, Master Alvarez?’ Harry asked.
‘It seems Master Phelippes will have some work for me shortly, so you will be seeing me again. Thank you for looking after Rikki.’
‘He’s a good lad. I gave him a bone to chew.’
Rikki loped across the yard to me, the bone still firmly clenched in his jaws.
I laughed. ‘Very well, you may bring it with you, but do not expect me to carry it.’
I set off on the walk back to Wood Street. The sun was high in the sky now, beating down with relentless August heat. Although it was nowhere near what we had endured in Portugal, it was enough to bring the stench of the City streets to a full ripeness. Very cold weather in winter brought many deaths from chest diseases and even from the very cold itself, but very hot weather brought its own dangers, above all the plague. There had not been a serious outbreak since 1582, the year my father and I arrived in England, but there were some cases every summer, often in the crowded slums near the docks, for the disease somehow seemed to arrive with foreign ships, though no one knew how. It was best to avoid such places when the weather was hot.
As I neared the Conduit in Cheapside, I caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd.
‘Peter!’ I called. ‘Peter Lambert!’
He turned and pushed his way through the throng to reach me, and grabbed both my hands.
‘Dr Alvarez! I heard you were come home, despite all the losses.’
‘Am I no longer Kit to you, Peter?’
I laughed. Peter and I were of an age and had often worked together at St Bartholomew’s, he as assistant apothecary, I as assistant physician.
‘Kit, then,’ he said, looking at me critically. ‘You’ve los
t weight.’
‘We all lost weight, those who managed not to die of wounds or disease or starvation. Are you not at work?’
‘I’ve been running errands, ordering new stocks for the hospital. Some have been allowed to get too low.’ He made a face, as if he could say more.
‘Have you time for a beer and something to eat?’
‘Aye, why not? We must all eat. There’s a decent inn back there a step or two.’
We made our way to the small inn he had pointed out, Rikki following behind, still carrying his bone. When we were seated in the small garden at the back, with mugs of beer and a couple of pies and Rikki under the table, Peter took a swig, then set down his mug and looked at me seriously.
‘That was a bad business about your father.’
I nodded. I had been able to speak of it fairly calmly to Walsingham and Phelippes, but Peter knew my father and I found my eyes filling. I turned aside in the hope he would not see.
‘This fellow Temperley,’ Peter said with contempt, ‘he’s a relic from the last century. You’d think Dr Stephens a modern revolutionary to hear Temperley carry on. After working with your father, I know that many of those old ideas of medicine have been proved wrong. Temperley thinks bleeding and cupping and purging are the cure for everything, from a woman’s morning sickness to the bloody flux to . . .to . . . I don’t know!...plague and lightning strike! Most of the time he will not even look at the patients, just requires me to bring a phial of their urine, holds it up to the light, then tells his brother – that’s his assistant, one who’s cut from the same cloth – tells him how much to bleed the patient.’
I’d never seen Peter so angry. He drained half his beer in one swallow.
‘You heard me say we were running short of supplies? Temperley never restocks, has no use for curative herbs. We’d almost run out of your father’s salves and other medicines. I asked Master Winger if I could order what we needed, and he gave me leave. He’s as unhappy as I, but what can an apothecary do, when the physician will not act?’
‘What of Dr Stephens?’ I asked. He was my father’s older colleague, who often argued with him, being suspicious of modern trends, but I believed that secretly he recognised their effectiveness.
‘Oh, he is growing old and lets Temperley take the lead. I think he will retire soon. He only wants the quiet life.’
I picked up my pie and began to eat. It was somewhat greasy, compared with the fare in the Lopez house, but the flavour was good.
‘So the patients are not being well treated?’
‘Far fewer are recovering than used to,’ he said glumly.
There was a pause, then he gave me an odd look, almost conspiratorial.
‘May I tell you something in confidence, Kit?’
‘Of course.’
‘I have not worked beside you and your father these last years without learning something. I have been using your wound salves and burn salves myself, unknown to Dr Temperley. I have had some success, at least when he has not thoroughly weakened a patient with too much bleeding.’
I grinned. ‘So you are turned physician?’
‘I could not claim that, but I want to help those poor folk. That’s why we have run low on some of our supplies. I do remember how to make up some of your cures, but not all of them, so I’m glad to run into you today. I heard you were staying with Dr Lopez and planned to visit you, to ask if you could remind me of those I have forgotten. That is, if you do not think you should keep them secret.’
‘Of course not. I would want to help the patients as well, even though I am told there is no place for me at Barts. You must be careful, though, Peter. Dr Temperley could make trouble for you.’
‘I know. I am careful.’
‘The Temperleys are living in our home in Duck Lane. They bought some of our goods when the creditors seized them. But it seems Dr Temperley thought the books of Arabic medicine were full of demonic symbols.’
Peter snorted. ‘The man is a fool.’
‘Not a fool, if he has qualified in medicine at Oxford, but clearly a man blinkered by his own old-fashioned opinions.’
‘What will you do now, Kit, if you are not coming back to Barts?’
‘I’ve just been to see what work they have for my in Walsingham’s office. And I might find work at St Thomas’s.’
‘Don’t they just take the hopeless and dying?’
There was a slightly patronising tone in his voice, for Barts looked down on Thomas’s.
‘They are all sick folk,’ I said. ‘They all need our help.’
We finished our pies and ordered more beer and a platter of cheese.
‘Do you remember William Baker?’ I said. ‘Who lost a leg after Sluys?’
He shuddered. ‘Not likely to forget, am I? I attended the amputation.’
‘Well, things have turned out well for him. He’s learning shoe-making as well as other leather work and he’s marrying this month. I’m going to the wedding. I’m sure William would be glad to see you there too.’
He smiled. ‘That’s good news indeed. He endured it bravely. I remember that little nephew of his, taking his mother’s cakes and sweetmeats round to the other patients.’ He sighed. ‘Can’t see that happening now.’
‘The wedding is just before Bartholomew Fair,’ I said. ‘I’ve been thinking of getting up a party to go. Would you join us?’
‘Gladly. We can hardly avoid it, right on our doorstep, occupying the whole of Smithfield and making more noise than all the cows, sheep, and pigs together. Aye, let’s set aside our troubles and visit the Fair.’
Chapter Four
At the end of a week, I made my way to Seething Lane again, and this time I took Rikki into Phelippes’s office with me. Phelippes stood up at once and I saw that he had been running his hand through his hair from behind, so that it stood up like a cock’s comb, a habit of his when worried or harassed.
‘Ah, good, Kit,’ he said. ‘I was about to send Cassie out to search for you amongst those player friends of yours. I must have some way to reach you. These despatches have arrived sooner than we expected and I need your help.’
Arthur Gregory was sitting at my table and now got to his feet with an expression of relief.
‘I’m delighted to see you, Kit,’ he said, smiling warmly, ‘and sorry to have missed you last week. I am even more relieved than Thomas that you are coming back to work! You know how slow I am at this deciphering. Leave me to my tools and my seals. Every man to his own talents.’
I laughed. ‘Come, Arthur! You are no slouch at deciphering. You just take greater pleasure in your art. And who can blame you?’
Who indeed? For Arthur’s forged seals were works of tiny perfection, even more beautifully made than the originals, which he recreated from copying their imprints on wax. How he managed to carve these tiny images, in reverse, was a source of wonder to me. As I had remarked more than once to Phelippes, it was fortunate that Arthur was an honest man, for he could have made a great fortune as an unscrupulous forger. Instead, he dedicated his skills to Walsingham’s service.
It was often necessary for us to open intercepted letters passing between foreign spies and their masters, decipher and translate them, then seal them again and send them on their way. Without Arthur’s skills in first lifting the seals without damaging the paper, then resealing them using one of his forged seals to imprint the wax, all Phelippes’s and my work would have gone for naught. The tampering with the letters would have been noticed at once.
Arthur was a quiet, modest man, but he was a true artist, and I sometimes wondered whether Phelippes and Sir Francis gave him all the credit he was due.
Now, however, he was very happy to take me through the despatch he had been working on, pointing out those parts he had been unable to decipher.
‘It is in French,’ he said, ‘and destined for the embassy here. It was diverted through the network managed in France by Dr Nuñez’s cousin, but originated with Mendoza. It is essential tha
t we send it on its way as soon as possible. Here is my crude first attempt.’
He handed me a sheet of paper with a large number of crossings out.
‘It’s a new code?’ I asked.
‘A variation on one you cracked last year,’ Phelippes said. ‘It seems either they think it is secure, or else they were in too much of a hurry to devise a new one. It shouldn’t give you much trouble. I am working on a batch from Rome.’
Mendoza was Philip of Spain’s principal agent based in Paris. He had once been the Spanish ambassador in London, ordered to leave the country five years ago when he was discovered to have been involved in a plot to assassinate the Queen, a conspiracy led by the Duke of Guise, cousin of Scottish Mary. Ever since, Mendoza had lurked just across the Channel, like some poisonous spider, spinning his web of intrigue intended to ruin England.
Arthur cleared away his rough sheets and threw them on the fire. Even in summer there was always a small fire burning in Phelippes’s office, so that we could burn everything that did not go into the secure files kept in locked chests either here or – in the case of the most important papers – in Sir Francis’s own office.
Arthur went back to his own cubbyhole, where we could soon hear the sound of his tiny tools carving a new seal. I went over to the window and pushed it open a little wider, so that the air from outside might counteract the heat of the fire. Phelippes grunted and placed a weight down on the pile of papers on his table to stop them blowing about. He rarely seemed to feel the heat. I removed my doublet, hung it on the back of my chair, and sat down to work in my shirt sleeves. Sara had made my new shirts with plenty of fabric, so that they bloused out generously, and I had no fear of being seen without my doublet, at least not by Phelippes, who was short sighted and anyway barely took notice of anything but the documents he was working on.
For an hour or so we worked in silence. Rikki had curled up under my desk, resting his head on my feet. After a while they began to feel a little numb, but it was so pleasant to have his companionship, I endured it. There was no sound in the room but his occasional sigh, the scratching of our quills, and faint noises from Arthur’s room. The window here, like the one in Sir Francis’s office, faced the quays, and we could hear the distant creak of the cranes, the occasional shouts of the seamen and dockers, and now and then a faint thump as some crate hit deck or quay.
