The Queen's Oranges

by House, Gregory

  ***

  Chapter 28. Ministering Angels and Visitations, The Ruyter, Morning, 10th June

  The water rippled past him like the shimmers of heat on a summer’s day. This was a different world, not at all like some had suggested. As he drifted along the scene changed. To his front, river grasses framed an elegant dwelling made from the timbers of a foundered vessel. It looked remarkable, just like the Ruyter now he got closer, except that the fresh paint work was covered by weeds waving in the flow of the current. Ned liked it. It was a lot warmer than he had imagined and as for the company, the two naiads with their long streaming hair and willowy figures tantalisingly hidden by translucent shifts were a pleasant sight for any young lad, especially as they bathed his brow and neck with their cooling touch.

  “More please. More caresses.”

  “Anythin’ y’ say Ned.” A warm lip nibbled his ear. That’s when the dream vanished and Ned awoke with a sighing moan. The scene had changed. The gentle swaying he recognised as the now familiar motion of a ship at dock. The rest of the surroundings resolved themselves into the dreadfully familiar shipmaster’s cabin on the Ruyter. He could have cursed. Would he never leave this damned room! His return to the haunted cabin was not the only perplexing change to his circumstance. Another was the lack of shirt and doublet, not to mention shoes and hose and the other necessities of apparel. And something else became clear on his return to consciousness. He was in the bed of the murdered Joachim and Pieter, naked and most disturbingly—he wasn’t alone.

  Ned tried to struggle out of the enshrouding sheet and blanket. He wasn’t going to go down like those two. Where was his sword or dagger? He heaved up and collapsed back into the bunk.

  “Ned, wot be the matter?” came a voice from under the covers by the wall, and a graceful arm emerged from the blankets followed by a head of light brown tousled hair, and a pair of very brown eyes ringed in dark lashes.

  It took a moment or two for Ned to recognise his bed mate, and there was a definite quaver in his voice. “Mary! Ahh what…what are you doing here?” Managing to free a hand, he rubbed his face in confusion. He hadn’t propositioned the punk had he? That part of the evening was unfortunately blank.

  “What…what am I doing here?” Then Ned recalled another difficulty with having a young attractive punk in the same bed as himself.

  “Ahh, where are my clothes?” That question went past the quaver and shaded into panic.

  “In the state y’ wuz in y’ would a ruined the bed, so we took ‘em off.”

  “Ahh, we? His questions seemed to be going around in circles without any useful results.

  “Lizzie and me. Y’ were wetter than a fish and colder than the grave, so we stripped y’ down.”

  It was an answer of sorts but that just raised more queries. The last he remembered was clutching at the pier timbers of London Bridge, struggling for breath. However the news that the two punks disrobed him was frankly worrying. “How did I get here?”

  Mary pulled herself further out of the tumble of blankets, and revealed to Ned’s mixed relief, a modicum of clothing. Well, a generously unlaced bodice that almost displayed most of the curve of a pair of rounded breasts. Ned felt a sudden constriction in mutinous parts as well as a surge of panic. He hadn’t, had he? It wasn’t an experience he was like to forget. I mean a lass like Mary… How could you… Even a monk would be hard pressed to resist those swelling features and smooth pale skin.

  “Y’ got dumped off by that great bearded devil o’ a northerner.” Mary pushed down the blankets and wriggling around, made herself more comfortable. The jostling movement did nothing to quell Ned’s rebellious regions, but he did have a partial explanation for his current circumstance. Skelton must have considered he was still useful enough to salvage. That was sort of good news, though when Norfolk’s man next called, he’d still have to find the elusive Spaniard again.

  Just to enhance his consternation, Mary lent across, brushed a stray lock of hair off his forehead and smiled shyly. “Y’ feeling more the man? Y’ were in a dread state when they brought y’ in. Rob sent for some help, but it ain’t come yet, so we did what we could.”

  He was longing to ask exactly what that aid entailed, if this was anything to go by. However his mutiny was turning into a full scale insurrection and he’d better try for distraction before events got further out of hand. “Ahh Mary, you were telling me yesterday about Edwards and Watkins?”

  Bethany’s cousin pouted and stretched, displaying enough features to make Ned’s breath to catch. “Why y’ want to hear bout them pair of dock rats when I’m here?”

  Ned gulped, rallying his slipping composure. The silky tone of the offer almost melted his resolve. “I think it will help break their conspiracy if I know what they do and where they go.”

  She gave a shrug and propped herself against the wall. Her bodice continued to gape invitingly. “Theys spend most o’ their time in an’ out o’ the Tower, ‘cept when they does business.”

  Ned had seen their version of trading, trolling the riverside and shaking down the merchants for fizzle grade Gonne powder. He supposed it had been the effects of the involuntary dunking and the consequent rest that finally set his brain a–firing. If those two traded adulterated Gonne powder, then logic dictated that somewhere by the river they must have a place to do the remixing and repacking. It would have to be close. According to Rob and the Doutch Gonners, each barrel should be around one hundredweight each, that being the Royal standard. For the hundreds of barrels it was possible for those two to swipe, Ned couldn’t see them trundling their booty all over the city, so it had to be some place between the Tower Wharf and say, Smarts Wharf, and realistically the closer to the Tower, the better. Ned captured a wandering hand, before it trespassed too far. Mary had very smooth skin and she purred like a cat while nibbling at his fingers. It was all very distracting!

  “Do you know if they have access to some buildings by the Tower, probably near the Goat’s Head?” That may have come out more as a squeal than a deep manly question, but Mary left off her, umm, ‘activities’ for the moment and gave the question some thought. “Lizzie said that Clemmie wuz always pestering ‘er to come with ‘im to an old abbey down towards the river. It was ‘alf ruins. They reckoned it were built by an ancient queen.”

  Ned nodded and allowed the hand he’d been holding to briefly escape. The fingernails grazed his chest eliciting a whimpered gasp.

  “Well Clemmie reckoned it ‘eld his promise o’ a lordship’s wealth, but Lizzie would ‘ave naught said. ‘e stank worse ‘n a cesspit and was blacker than an ‘eathen, affer ‘e were there fo’ awhile.”

  Got them, thought Ned as his resolve wavered and dissolved. Damn, he could have been dead last night! Ned’s daemon whispered urgently that he wasn’t going to get a better offer if it was handed to him on his uncle’s finest gilt plate. Well why the hell not, he wasn’t a monk was he? Why shouldn’t he? Ned smiled and bent closer grazing Mary’s beckoning lips with his. Such a sweet lass—just like her cousin.

  The old priest used to talk about the sweetness of forbidden fruit and how Satan had tempted the mother of mankind, Eve, into grievous sin, and ever since then the passions and lust of women had been the downfall of all mankind. The old fellow really worked up his own passion with those sermons. Ned could still remember the glazed expression in Father John’s eyes, as he went through his admonishment, his shaking hand and quivering jowls, and at every word he had his eye fixed on the plump diminutive figure of Alice Fletcher sitting quietly in the third row.

  Then after the mass, regular as clockwork, Father John would limp down the lane as fast as he could to Mistress Alice’s house for his Sunday serving, as Uncle Richard so wryly observed and thus do lusts and appetites make fools of us all.

  For Ned it was a memory recalled too late as the door to the cabin slammed open.

  “Ned! Ned, I came as soon as they gave me word!” The urgent welcome shuddered to an abrupt halt as Mistre
ss Black beheld the scene in the bunk.

  *

  Ned knelt down on the slimy stones of the starling. He didn’t have a choice and so another set of hose was ruined in this foolish affair! If he survived till tomorrow, finding a way to have presentable clothes for the audience with Sir Thomas More was going to be a challenge. However lamentable that occasion turned out to be, it couldn’t surpass the scene he had recently escaped in the shipmaster’s cabin. It wasn’t that he had actually done anything with Mary or that he and Meg Black had behaved in any manner that implied a marriage contract was imminent or needed. So the ensuing rage, tears and distress of Mistress Black really shouldn’t concern him. He’d maintained his honour and dignity, well once he’d grabbed the sheet and fled the cabin. Luckily Tam had the heart of a lion and ventured back into the disputed territory to rescue his clothes. So it really shouldn’t have made him feel such a traitor to slink off here. He really did have urgent matters to attend to. The angel at his shoulder made a few whispered aspersions regarded his conduct, and a good part of Ned was forced to agree.

  This must be the spot. He couldn’t have washed much further along or Skelton wouldn’t have been able to pull him out. It was definitely this starling—he remembered the distinctive windows in the house above. He’d used it as a sighting mark yesterday evening. And then the slightest hint of colour hiding in a crevice caught Ned’s eye, and without thinking too much about what he was doing, he drove his hand down into the murky space. This was not a task he would normally have considered but desperation was its own imperative.

  In theory the tidal race washed these piers clean twice a day, pity this wasn’t enough. Ned groped downwards, his fingers crawling over…well he actually didn’t want to know what they were encountering until the very tips of his nails scraped something that felt familiar. Steeling himself for a more painful effort, he took a risk and stretched that bit further until he could grab the object and pull it out. This took more skin off bruised knuckles, but damn the pain, this morning had been humiliation enough.

  In the morning sunlight he turned the prize over in his hand and sneered. Well, how unexpected! Another measly orange! He supposed the plotters could have been more inventive, but when the Queen invested in several hogsheads of oranges, well they had to be used for something.

  Ned thoughtfully weighed this one in his hand. There was a problem. He had, by now, become familiar with the usual size, weight ratio of this piece of fruit as well as having become closely acquainted with its innards recently. This orange differed from those others—it definitely much heavier than it should be.

  Irritated with Meg Black, Skelton’s brutal assurance and the plotters pretentious arrogance, he ripped the orange apart. Its contents dropped, ringing on the stones of the starling. Some bounced back into the slimy crevice, while others winkled their metallic flash before disappearing into the foaming waters.

  Ned must have been more affected by the experience of drowning than he thought, for instead of instinct taking over, he just stood there watching the cascade of coins with a surprised look on his face.

  Anger gave him a metaphorical boot in the cods, what was this? Were all conspirators dumber than pig’s dribble? Secreted messages and hidden codes he could understand, but what sort of dim–witted fool hides gold coins inside oranges? They were already an expensive luxury. Why go to so much trouble? A few discreet purses or the ‘gift’ of a small chest and your bribes were sorted without going through all this rigmarole.

  Ned bent down and picked up a couple of the remaining coins. One he knew well, an old ‘copper nose’, a more recent issue from the mint with a reduced amount of precious metal. Well it was one way to make His Majesty’s funds go further, but it did play merry hell with trade. The other coin was different though. It was a Rhenish florin, one of the accepted standards of trade across the channel, especially in the Imperial territories. The lost coins had the appearance of sovereigns or marks, as they had tumbled away, and at a guess the orange had held five or so coins.

  So the cargo that Don Juan Sebastian risked all to take downriver of the bridge was one or more large baskets of oranges, the like of which Ned had lugged up three flights of stairs to the Queen’s rooms at Richmond palace. As he had cause to remember, just one of those baskets was over a hundred weight. Now, with the added burden of the coins, that would push it closer to two hundred weight per basket—really unnecessary and overly dramatic.

  Ned shook his head in bemusement. If he’d any lingering doubts as to Imperial involvement, they’d vanished now. This collection of oranges came from the ambassador’s residence, and not from the abode of the Stafford women where the others with the secreted messages originated. Unless of course this was another set, separate from the first, but that would be just confusing. Unless there was a purpose for the division?

  Ned could feel a return of the post Meg Black’s entrance headache coming on. This plot was become too bizarrely complex for his liking. Here he was, on London Bridge, mid way between the city and Southwark, also equidistance between Westminster and Smarts Key. He could go anywhere from this point, even flag down a wherry and jump on board a vessel sailing for France. And then he could forget all about this past week and all its travails.

  No! Unfortunately the time for cutting and running was well past by several days. Ned had till tomorrow, mid morning, to remove the threat of the Lord Chancellor’s writ and still he lacked the last pieces of the puzzle for any form of credible explanation or leverage. As for the rest of the tasks, they were so tantalisingly close to a solution—Skelton had apparently been impressed by his bravado and condescendingly gave a short reprieve on the Spaniard hunt, though Cromwell’s writ to investigate the Queen’s plots would only be cleared if the Orange affair was resolved, while poor Master Robinson was still missing, and as Ned was now certain, connected with the murderous powder sorters, whom due to last night’s excitement he’d been unable to visit this morning.

  Ned scrabbled back up the ladder to the congested roadway of the bridge and rejoined his body guards. Tam had been perusing some of the silver gilt plate on display at a small cutlers shop. His narrow eyed examination of the pieces had visibly perturbed the owner who seemed to be torn between wanting to keep an eye on his wares while at the same time not wanting to do anything to upset the burly retainer. Their sudden departure saw the artisan slumping in relief. Ned was amused. Tam Bourke, who topped out at over six feet and audibly clanked with all compliment of sharp ironware, would be enough to give any merchant conniptions.

  “If we survive the week I buy it for you.”

  “Nay bother. Tis a piece o’ my cousin, Liam. He’s ‘prenticed to a silversmith o’er High street way. Nice bit o’ gilt. He reworked it from a haul out o’ Huggin Court.”

  Ned bemusedly shook his head. The time he spent with Captaine Gryne’s men was certainly an education. He gave Tam a measured regard. His bodyguard, despite his obvious interest in modern silverware, had been constantly scanning the jostling crowd for threats. This constant surveillance certainly helped his confidence. Ned was absolutely determined not to be caught off guard again. He wasn’t a cowardly, treacherous measle, as one particular apothecary’s apprentice had so recently maintained, and he did have both the brains and the stomach to stick by his convictions. So it was time to cross the Rubicon. He’d been putting it off for most of the week. Now there was no choice. Ned Bedwell had to take a chance and beard the peril of the Gryne Dragone.

  ***

  Chapter 29. Perilous Predictions, The Gryne Dragone, Southwark, Midday to afternoon, 10th June

  After his last sojourn in Southwark where he’d run into Canting Michael, Ned had been putting off this visit. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the threat. After all it was daytime, the refuge of Gryne’s territory wasn’t more than a fast sprint away and he did have Tam Bourke at his side. It was just that Dr Caerleon terrified him. Ned had received a University education and in spite of the efforts of his college master
s, had read the most contemporary works, especially the suppressed ones. So when it came to dealing with a master of the arcane arts of astrology, he felt himself learned enough to pierce the usual cloud of superstition and chicanery that surrounded practitioners of prognostication.

  In the past Dr Caerleon had proved to be disturbingly perceptive and his analysis of any problem tended to be brutally honest. That clarity undoubtedly had a lot to do with why he was under the protection of Captaine Gryne, using the assumed name of Dr Agryppa. The powerful did not, as a rule, appreciate honesty. The previous year the good Doctor had been ‘officially’ burnt for witchcraft at Smithfield. He was rotting away in one of Bishop Stokesley’s dungeons, with only further long years of darkness to look forward to until the ‘deceased’ had been providentially rescued by Cardinal Wolsey. The now disgraced Cardinal had wanted his own tame astrologer who could assure him that the stars still promised a bright future, full of continuing power and influence. Dr Caerleon was clever enough to give the Cardinal exactly the horoscope he wanted and not the one he needed.

  Ned was honest enough with himself to admit that he would have been in several pieces, hanging from spikes scattered around the city by now, if he hadn’t listened to the old man’s advice. The problem was not that Dr Caerleon was right. The learned doctor’s perception of events and people was formidable. It was just that in return for aid last time, Ned had exchanged a promise of performing three tasks. Now this was just like the old tales of the deals with the faeries. To Ned it smacked of much double dealing and slipperiness, since at the time he’d forgotten to get the good doctor to specify exactly what sort of task was recompense. Thus his visits to the Gryne Dragone tended to end just short of the door, in case the redemption of his honour came at too high a price.

  At the present he was also harried by one more difficulty, courtesy of his better angel. If this venture failed and if he still lived, it could be necessary to justify to the church authorities the methods employed, in order to save both his life and those of his friends. From past repute, Foxford, the Bishop of London’s vicar general, would relish the chance to examine the taint of dubious dealings upon their souls. Despite the injunctions on forgiveness and compassion to be found within the Bible, the church tended to have a stern attitude about its parishioner’s utilising the dark gifts of prophecy and divination. Well, except of course for His Holiness the Pope and significantly large number of cardinals and archbishops. No doubt their rarefied sanctity provided sufficient protection from the temptations of the devil.