Bartholomew Fair

by Ann Swinfen

  Berden deployed his men quietly, sending four of them down an alley running alongside the Herbar, so they could keep watch on the garden at the back of the house. The rest he placed along the Dowgate in both directions, both down towards Thames Street and the river, and up to Walbrook. We ourselves found a corner beside a jutting wing of a house directly opposite the front door of Drake’s house.

  ‘The kitchen door opens into that alleyway,’ Berden murmured softly, pointing to where his men had disappeared into the dark. ‘That is where the deliveries are made. Our fellows could gain entrance either there or here at the front.’

  ‘Do you suppose they plan to wait till the party from Devon is here?’ I said. ‘If so, they will probably keep a watch for them, and if they do not come, delay any action until another day.’

  ‘We don’t know for sure that they mean to attack Drake’s family,’ Phelippes said reasonably. ‘They may prefer to attack while the house is empty except for a few servants, grab what valuables they can, then flee.’

  ‘They could have done that any day since the meeting at the Fair,’ I objected.

  Berden shook his head.

  ‘Nicholas Borecroft only moved in here yesterday,’ he said. ‘Probably they were waiting for that, to make it easier for them to gain entrance.’

  I nodded, but doubted whether he could see me in the dark. What he said made sense.

  ‘But still,’ I said, ‘now that Nicholas Borecroft is lodging in the house with his brother – and if we are right, he is there as a Trojan horse, to let them in – what is the purpose of the gunpowder? There are too many strands to this plot. I am not sure we have made it out, even now.’

  Phelippes grunted. ‘Well, we shall have to wait and see.’

  He shifted uncomfortably. He was even less at ease with this long wait than I was, but Berden seemed quite relaxed, managing to remain quiet and still, like a skilled hunter waiting for his prey.

  Time stretched on. There were no more passersby, neither small tradesmen hawking their wares nor ordinary citizens on their way home to supper. One by one, the candles and lanterns inside the houses along the street began to go out as the inhabitants made their way to bed. In the Herbar there had been lights in two of the ground floor windows at the front when we arrived, and a light shone across the alleyway, probably from a window in the kitchen premises. Now one of the downstairs lights went out and we could see a light moving upwards – someone, probably one of the servants, climbing the stairs to the attic bedrooms.

  Somewhere, a church clock struck eleven.

  Then we all tensed, for the clatter of a horse’s hooves suddenly rang out on the cobbles, approached rapidly from our left, coming up from Thames Street. We drew back further into the corner. It would not do for Sir Francis Walsingham’s senior agent to be reported to the Watch for lurking in the street after dark.

  The rider halted before the Herbar, threw his reins loosely over a hitching post, and ran up to the front door. There was nothing at all furtive about his approach. He banged on the door and called out. ‘Message for the steward!’

  The door was opened almost at once. We could see a lantern and just make out a tall man in Drake’s livery holding it up. The rider handed over a letter, the men exchanged a few words, then the door was closed again. The rider mounted his horse and rode away up into the city.

  ‘Of course,’ Phelippes breathed softly. ‘Drake will have sent word that he and his party will not be coming tonight. The steward and housekeeper were probably waiting up for them. Watch. We’ll see them going to bed now.’

  He was right. More lights moved upstairs and soon went out. Only the dim glow showing in the alleyway remained.

  ‘I wonder how many servants there are in the house,’ I said. ‘If the plan is to blow the place up, do the conspirators not care that they are likely to die?’

  Beside me, I felt Berden shrug. There was, of course, no answer to that.

  I began to get cramp in my right calf and had to bend down and rub it. How long would we stay? Nothing at all might happen tonight. The same church clock struck midnight. I seemed to be hearing that sound every night lately.

  Phelippes stirred again in discomfort. If the vigil was to be called off, it was Phelippes who would have to make the decision. I suspected he was reluctant to do so simply on the grounds that he was tired and bored. It would make him look weak, and that would do him no favours with the men he employed. However, nothing seemed to be happening. We could hardly stand here all night.

  Perhaps we had read the signs quite wrongly. There might be no plan of attack, for all the scraps and rumours that we had were but straws in the wind, no real evidence. Or it might be that the target was the warehouse, not the Herbar. Nick still had two men watching the warehouse, but they had seen nothing unusual about the place in all the time they had been there. Or perhaps the target was the Herbar, but for a different night. Or perhaps the conspirators intended their gunpowder for someone or somewhere else altogether – Essex, or Goldsmiths Hall, or even the Queen herself! We might have our noses down on quite the wrong trail. Except that Borecroft had been seen with Poley and the puppeteers, the puppeteers had been seen with the soldiers who had the gunpowder, and now we knew that Borecroft was here. Surely we could not be mistaken? That trail must lead to the Herbar.

  Phelippes was whispering to Berden. ‘I think we will stay until two o’ the clock. If nothing has happened by then, we will abandon this for now, just leaving a few of your men to keep watch. All is so quiet, I cannot believe anything is afoot tonight.’

  By now my eyes had adjusted well to the dim light cast by the lanterns hanging from the house fronts and I saw Berden nod in agreement.

  ‘Very well.’

  I lifted my cramped leg and wriggled my toes. A little less than two hours to wait. I could manage that.

  Then I saw that the faint loom of light in the alleyway had grown, and at the same time I heard the creak of a door. I grabbed Berden’s arm and jerked my head in the direction of the light. He nodded. He had noticed it too. I held my breath. Was something happening at last, or was it just some servant going to visit a privy in the garden?

  I thought at first that the light had gone dim again, then realised that it was blocked by the figure of a man, who was not heading to the garden but out into the street directly opposite us. He paused a moment, looking up and down Dowgate, then began to head up the street in the same direction as the messenger, walking fast at first, but quickly breaking into a kind of shambling run.

  Berden was tense beside me.

  ‘That is the cook,’ he said. ‘Oliver Borecroft. Where is he off to at this time of night? Meeting the conspirators? But why him, not his brother?’

  A shape detached itself from the shadows and slipped after the cook. One of Berden’s men.

  ‘I could see the likeness to Nicholas Borecroft,’ I said. ‘This man is plumper, but his face is similar, and he has the same curly fair hair, though his hair is beginning to recede.’

  ‘It seems something is toward after all,’ Phelippes said, leaning forward eagerly. He had clearly forgotten his tiredness.

  The light in the alley remained bright. The door must be open, adding to the light from the window. A candle or a lantern in the kitchen, probably. But it remained quiet. No one was stirring in the house, no one approached from outside.

  ‘Has he gone to fetch the others?’ Phelippes sounded impatient.

  I suppose he hoped that the cook would bring the soldiers back with him now and they could be seized at last, after leading us such a dance.

  ‘What will your man do?’ I asked Berden.

  ‘Keep the cook in sight, but not approach him. I’ve warned them all that we want to round the conspirators up, all of them. No point in stopping the cook. He’ll just be the messenger boy.’

  ‘An odd person to choose,’ I said. ‘He’s too fat to run fast. But everything about this whole affair is odd.’

  I thought I could hear
some furtive noises from the house and strained my ears to hear better. There was the creak of rusty hinges, then a brief silence, then the sound of running footsteps as Nicholas Borecroft suddenly burst from the alley, his hair tangled and his eyes wild. Berden put his fingers in between his lips and whistled loudly. As he rushed across the street, his men sprang out from their hiding places up and down Dowgate.

  Phelippes and I followed Berden, though I was limping a little from the cramp in my leg. Berden had Nicholas Borecroft gripped firmly with his arm twisted up behind his back, and to my astonishment Borecroft was sobbing.

  ‘I didn’t want to do it!’ he cried. ‘I didn’t want to do it!’

  Berden was shaking him, but could get no more sense out of him. He slapped Borecroft across the face, but he only sobbed the louder.

  ‘Do what, you turd!’ Berden shouted, but Borecroft merely became more hysterical and incoherent.

  All this noise was rousing the inhabitants of the neighbouring houses. Lights began to appear in upstairs rooms, windows were thrown open and dimly seen figures leaned out.

  I was suddenly seized by a terrible notion. Borecroft had already done something. I was certain of it. His brother had fled, not because he was fetching others but because he wanted to get away from the house.

  I pushed past Phelippes and Berden and all the men crowding round them and limped down the alley. Berden’s four watchers coming up from the garden nearly collided with me, but I dodged them and reached the open door.

  It led, as we had expected, directly into the kitchen. Everything seemed orderly within. There was a huge fireplace, empty now, with a complicated spit mechanism and hooks for stewpots. A row of shining pans, neatly arranged by size, hung on one wall. Shelves reached all the way up another wall, filled with every kind of fancy mould for elegant desserts, jars of expensive spices (all neatly labelled), bottles of essences, three sizes of mortars, and the most enormous block of sugar I had ever seen.

  There were two doors opposite me. One stood half ajar and seemed to lead to a larder with stone shelves for keeping meat and fish cold. The other was closed and probably led to the main part of the house. Nothing seemed amiss.

  Then I noticed that a hatch in the floor was open, the trap door laid back against the wall below the shelves. That must be where the sound of rusty hinges had come from. There were three candles lit on the huge scrubbed table of pale wood which stood in the middle of the room. I picked up one and carried it over to the hatch.

  It was black as shipwright’s pitch down there. A cellar of some sort, reached by a ladder. Then I saw that it was not entirely black. A tiny gleam like the eye of a cat winked in the darkness. My hands were shaking, but I must see what was down there. Whatever Borecroft had done, it must have something to do with opening the hatch.

  I could still hear the shouting from the street, but as I climbed below the level of the floor, the sound was cut off. All I could hear now was a faint fizzing noise. Could there be a cat down here, hissing at me? But I had seen only one eye, not two. When I reached the floor, I raised my candle and looked around me. There were rows of barrels here. This would be where they kept the beer and ale. Against the far wall there were racks of bottles, French wine by their shape. No doubt part of Drake’s loot. He was not above a little piracy against the French as well as the Spanish.

  Nothing. It all seemed perfectly normal. I turned to climb back up the ladder, then my heart gave a sudden jerk. A face was looking up at me from the floor. My hand was now shaking so much I nearly dropped the candle, but as I brought its light nearer, I saw that it was not a human face, though I recognised it.

  Scarramuccia leered up at me from the damp stones of the cellar.

  Nearly life size, the puppet who had represented Drake in the show at the Fair was easily mistaken for a body in the half light. Yet he was not quite his same dapper self. Gone was his wooden sword, his strings had been cut off, and instead of his elegant shape he had now developed a huge belly, more grotesque even than Arlecchino’s.

  I stared at him. This at last was evidence of the connection between the puppeteers, Borecroft, and the Herbar. But why had the puppet been tampered with like this? And above all, why was he here in the cellar of Drake’s home?

  My attention was caught again by the hissing sound. Perhaps a cat was trapped down here. He would be frightened by this figure, which looked human but was not. I turned slowly, so as not to scare the animal. There in the shadows was the tiny glow I had taken to be a cat’s eye. I walked over to it. It was not a cat, and the hissing noise seemed to come from the same place. I bent to look at it closer, aware that the candle was nearly done and the last of the melted wax was running down over my fingers.

  Lying at my feet was a piece of thin rope, the end of it burning with a small yellow light. Rope does not normally hiss when it burns. This rope must have been soaked in something. I followed it along with my eye, realising at the same time that it was burning quite fast. The rope led to Scarramuccia. It had been sewed to his back, like a mocking monkey’s tale.

  I gasped as I remembered the discussion I had had with Phelippes about gunpowder and the mining of castles. Scarramuccia was a mine, his belly stuffed with gunpowder, and there was no more than two feet of his fuse left. I yelped as the end of the candle fell over and landed on the floor. Suddenly I had nothing but the light coming from the hatch to see by, but even with that small amount I saw that the dying candle had hit the fuse and started another spark, this time barely a foot from the puppet.

  As soon as the spark reached Scarramuccia, he would explode. I must get out of here. Then I remember the servants in their beds upstairs, the men in the street, the neighbours hanging out of their windows. I stamped on the burning fuse again and again, but I could not put it out. Whatever the fuse had been treated with, it would not go out that easily. There was only one thing to do. I grabbed the macabre figure around the chest and hoisted it over my shoulder. It was as heavy as a well grown child. I needed a hand to climb the ladder, but the puppet kept slipping and in the end I had to steady it with one hand and keep letting go of the ladder with the other to stop it sliding down my back.

  The burning fuse was licking at my hand now, but I bit down on my lip and climbed through to the kitchen. The door was still open. No one had followed me inside. I could still hear the shouting from out in the street. I yelped with pain as the fuse burned into my hand, but I thought if I could clamp my hand around it, it might go out. You can snuff out a candle by pinching its wick, could I not do the same with this?

  Sobbing with pain as I closed my left hand round the burning portion of the wick which was nearest to the puppet, I stumbled out of the door and along the alley.

  ‘Out of the way,’ I shouted, ‘out of the way.’ I pushed through the crowd, elbowing them away from me relentlessly.

  I nearly fell into the horse trough, but managed somehow to heave Scarramuccia off my shoulder and fling him into the water. I held the figure down by the chest with both hands, its face staring up at me as if I were drowning a real man. Drake at the bottom of the ocean. At last I saw the two burning sections of the fuse fade and go out. The pain in my hand seemed to shoot right up my arm, so I kept it down in the water to cool, leaning against the edge of the trough, feeling sick.

  Berden was beside me, staring down at the drowned puppet. A dirty cloud was rising from that awful paunch, staining the water. I snatched my hand out of the trough in horror, and looked blankly at the reddened and blistered skin.

  ‘What in Jesu’s name?’ he said.

  ‘The puppet,’ I said. ‘The gunpowder is in the puppet. I managed to reach it before the wick set it alight.’

  Then I slid to the ground and the world went black.

  I cannot have been unconscious long, for when I came to myself the men were still crowded round Nicholas Borecroft, whose sobs had turned into gasping hiccoughs. Phelippes was leaning over me in concern, his spectacles catching the light from the doorway of the
nearest house. Beyond him Berden was hanging over the horse trough, trying to fish out Scarramuccia without soaking the sleeves of his doublet. He shouted to one of his men to bring a stick.

  Outside the Herbar, I could hear Borecroft saying over and over again, ‘Thank God! Thank God it didn’t go off! I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do it, but I had no choice.’

  I sat there, feeling very tired and wishing dully that the pain in my hand would stop. The sleeves of my doublet and shirt were soaking wet up to my armpits. I wondered what they would do to Borecroft. I knew vaguely that I ought to get up and fetch my satchel, which I had dropped when Borecroft came running out of the house. I must salve my hand, though the best ingredients were probably to be found back in that kitchen.

  ‘Kit?’ Phelippes put his hand on my shoulder. Nervously, I thought. ‘Are you all right? That was a brave thing you did.’

  ‘The gunpowder,’ I said muzzily. ‘It won’t explode now, will it?’

  ‘Nay, it will not,’ Berden said, holding up the dripping puppet. ‘But we had better warn people not to let their horses drink from that trough until it has been drained.’ He ran his free hand over his eyes. ‘Jesu, Kit, I thought you had run mad, rushing out of the house carrying that puppet. What a monstrous thing.’

  ‘And what a monstrous deed.’ I could barely hear my own voice. I glanced over my shoulder at the Herbar. A scared group of servants was standing in front of it in their night shifts, some with cloaks, others barely decent.

  ‘They likely owe their lives to you.’ Berden jerked his head toward the servants.

  I nodded vaguely. At the moment, I could hardly think. At least the explosion had been stopped.

  ‘We must do something for that hand of yours,’ Phelippes said. ‘Tell us what is best to do?’

  I tried to rouse myself, but I still did not trust my legs to hold me.

  ‘If someone could look in that kitchen,’ I said. ‘I need white of egg beaten together with honey, then the whole pounded with a little grease – any animal grease will do. It will make a paste. It needs to be done quickly, to save the skin.’