by Ann Swinfen
‘Poley is on good terms with the French embassy, carries papers for the French and Spanish, visits the Scots queen under the guise of a sympathiser. And all the while he passes information and copied papers to us.’
But could he be trusted? From the little I had seen of the man, I suspected he changed his loyalties as easily as he changed his doublet. I tried to sound out Phelippes tentatively on this point, for I felt the more information I possessed about Poley, the better I might be able to arm myself against him.
‘You say he passes information to us,’ I said, ‘but can you be sure he does not also pass information from us to the Scottish queen and her circle?’ I was now so much a part of Phelippes’s work that I regarded myself as included in ‘us’.
Phelippes looked at me over his spectacles and seemed to ponder how much he should say to me.
‘It is a difficult business, this, Kit. Sir Francis’s secret service. Some of our agents have been turned from traitors to informers loyal to the Queen. I know you have seen Gifford. He is one such.’
I gave him a startled look. I had not realised that Gifford was a former traitor.
‘Oh, yes,’ he went on, ‘Gilbert Gifford comes of an old Staffordshire Catholic family. That is why he is so readily trusted by the Scottish queen. And his knowledge of the county is useful. Chartley lies in Staffordshire, not far from Lichfield.’
‘But can you be sure of his loyalty?’
‘Yes. With Gifford I think we can. He is loyal to the Queen and opposed to the invasion of England by foreign armies. There are many English Catholics like him. They would rather a settled England under our Queen than the dangerous prospect of invasion by France or Spain. That is why the Queen is prepared to turn a blind eye to their faith as long as their loyalty to the state and the throne remains firm.’
‘But Poley – is he a Catholic?’
Phelippes gave a mirthless smile. ‘Not to my knowledge. I do not believe he has any strong religious faith, though he is an accomplished play-actor and can pass for Catholic or Protestant as the situation demands.’
I had already been told that – when I met him first – Poley had been covertly placed in the Marshalsea as a supposed Catholic sympathiser, while all the time his purpose was to glean information about plots from those incarcerated there, and to learn the names of secret Catholics. No wonder that he had supposed himself poisoned, if one of his fellow prisoners had found him out.
After this conversation, I became more than ever convinced that both Phelippes and Walsingham were uncertain of him. My own judgement was simpler. Robert Poley, I was sure, would pursue the interests of Robert Poley and no one else.
‘At this particular time he is a member of Sidney’s household,’ said Phelippes, ‘which is known for its religious tolerance. To the Catholic plotters, Poley seems safely placed, working for them near the heart of our network, since Sidney’s wife is Frances Walsingham, Sir Francis’s only child.’
I nodded. ‘So that means Poley has the trust of the Queen’s enemies, but can reveal all to you and Sir Francis?’
‘Exactly.’ There was a note of reserve in his tone.
To this day I do not know for sure whether Poley did honestly reveal all to Walsingham and Phelippes at that time, or whether he had half a foot in the Catholic camp. I did not know. And I do not know. But I do know what I believe.
Poley was a traitor.
Chapter Five
It had been a bitter, unforgiving winter, but at last there were signs of spring, even here in London. We had no garden with our miserable hospital lodging, and I had no reason to be invited into the fine gardens of the wealthy, though my father sometimes attended his few private patients in their great houses. Yet for anyone with eyes to see and a longing for the lost beauties of the countryside, there are unexpected corners and pockets of wild loveliness even in London.
There are the churchyards, for one thing. Although some are grazed by sheep to keep down the grass, there are others – small neglected patches beside tottering ancient churches – where wild flowers, which some would call weeds, can flourish undisturbed by human foot or ovine teeth. Daisies, poppies, eye-bright, St John’s wort, forget-me-not riot amongst the long grass. Honeysuckle clambers over crumbling walls, not in flower yet, but that will come, and those spiked arms clutching the stones will break out into sweet eglantine in the summer. There are useful herbs here too: peppermint and sweet Cecily, borage and feverfew, fennel and wild garlic.
Not only the churchyards had now begun to don their spring dress. In muddy corners of filthy, overcrowded, unpaved London lanes, violets put forth their shy blooms, and primroses opened their faces to the hesitant sun. I saw a swathe, a scarf, a river of golden cowslips running down the side of a midden behind a livery stable, their clustered bells as delicate as any I had gathered with Isabel on the edge of our grandfather’s meadow. Surely they were early? But the steaming warmth of the midden must have tricked them into believing the year was further advanced than it was.
My days had been too full, and my fingers too cold and stiff with chilblains, during those bitter winter months, to think of my lute, which lay beside my clothes coffer in my chamber. Now, however, when the first balmy air of spring could be felt, I carried it down to our small parlour. In winter we lived almost entirely in the kitchen, for the benefit of the fire, not being able to afford a second fire in the parlour. Now the unbearable winter chill of the room was gone and my father and I had taken to sitting there in the evening, reading. That day our work at the hospital had been undemanding and no summons from Seething Lane had come for me. After seeing the golden abundance of the cowslips on my way to the hospital soon after dawn, I was in the mood for music.
My father looked up as I began to tune the lute, which was sadly awry.
‘Excellent!’ he said. ‘It is weeks since you played your lute.’
‘Months. I hope I have not neglected it so long that the strings will play me false.’
It took a long while, but at last I had it tuned to my satisfaction. As I worked, my father took his treble recorder out of its case and played a few notes so that I could tune my strings to harmonise with it.
‘Morley, I think,’ I said. ‘Oh let my tears fall.’
‘Rather sad.’
‘We can play something more cheerful afterwards.’
I bent my head, gave my father the nod to begin, and soon we were lost in that private world of music-making that only those who know it can understand. I sang the words softly as I played. My voice is true, and fairly sweet, but I have no real power behind it. I could never fill a theatre, as I supposed Simon must sometimes have to do.
We had been playing for perhaps half an hour, everything ranging from jolly Portuguese folk dances to some of Tallis’s pieces with tricky harmony, and were in the middle of Byrd’s My Lord Willoughby’s Welcome Home when we heard a knock on the street door. Joan had been dozing by the fire in the kitchen (and probably not appreciating our music much), but we heard her chair scrape on the floor and then the creak as the door opened. The newcomer’s voice was unmistakable.
‘It’s Master Harriot,’ I said, starting to lay aside my lute as Joan showed him into the parlour.
‘No, no, please don’t stop playing,’ he said, beaming from one to the other of us. ‘I could hear the sweet sounds from the street through the open window, and wondered whether I might join you.’
‘Oh dear!’ said my father. ‘We shall have our neighbours complaining tomorrow.’
‘Not at all. It was the very music of the spheres!’
I gave a snort of laughter. ‘I think not. I am sorely out of practice. You will take some refreshment?’ Laying my lute down beside my stool, I stepped into the kitchen and told Joan to bring in glasses and the cake she had made earlier that day. Behind me, my father was drawing the cork from one of his few precious bottles of wine. It was not often that we had the honour of a visit from Master Harriot.
When I returned, Harriot h
ad picked up my father’s other recorder, a tenor, and was playing a snatch of melody on it. The melody was heart-wrenching, with a dying fall that made me want to weep.
‘What is that?’ I asked.
‘A new piece by John Dowland,’ Harriot said. ‘Not published yet, I believe, but I heard it played at Raleigh’s house last week. Do you think you could extemporise to it?’
Harriot could remember exactly any melody once heard, as I could, and both my father and I could improvise at will, so within minutes the three of us had our instruments winding their melodies about each other like human voices entwined in a madrigal.
At some point Joan must have brought in the tray, but none of us noticed until we had brought our impromptu composition to an end and looked at each other, laughing.
Music and mathematics – surely the most sublime and ethereal of God’s gifts to Man!
Harriot mopped his forehead with a fine silk handkerchief, which he then screwed carelessly into a ball and shoved into his pocket.
‘Ah, I should visit Duck Lane more often. Do the authorities at St Bartholomew’s have any idea what jewels they have buried in their crowded lodgings? Dr Alvarez, you and Kit deserve better than this.’
I saw my father shrug as I moved to pour out the wine and slice the cake.
‘We are given these lodgings free. We could move to one of the better hospital houses, but then we would have to pay rent. I prefer to put the money aside for my old age and Kit’s future. You know that we lost everything when we left Portugal.’
Harriot accepted the wine and cake I passed to him and shook his shaggy head sadly.
‘It is a cruel world we live in. There is so much ignorance and bigotry abroad. I know what they call me – ‘the Conjuror’ – because the ignorant believe that mathematics is some kind of magic. At least we do not have the Inquisition in England.’
‘Yet what could be further from magic,’ I said, ‘when it rests on the most rigorous reasoning of the human brain?’
‘Exactly. But even educated men, who should know better, pretend to subscribe to this view of mathematics as magic.’
‘It comes, perhaps,’ said my father, ‘from their fear of men who may be cleverer than they are. By calling you the Conjuror they demean you, make you less dangerous.’
Harriot shrugged. ‘I’m in no contest with men of power. That is not my world at all.’ He took a large bite of his cake and washed it down with a hearty sip of his wine.
‘And you, Kit? You have not come for your studies with me for weeks now.’
‘My days have not been my own. We have had a difficult time at the hospital, and when I am not there I have been working for Walsingham.’
‘Ah, yes. The code-breaking. I did not realise that it would still be occupying you. When I was approached by that fellow – Robert Polling? – I was able to praise your skills with ciphers, but I thought Sir Francis had just a brief task in mind.’
‘Robert Poley,’ I said. ‘That is his name. Whatever he gave you to understand – and I can well believe he was not honest and straightforward – it seems Sir Francis feels he can call on me whenever there is more work than his own man can do. And that is often.’
‘Well, I suppose it is worthwhile work, for Sir Francis is an upright and honourable gentleman. And I am sure it is bound to be secret in nature.’
‘It is.’
‘I know you can keep your counsel. Yet I have scarce seen you since I returned from the Chesapeake expedition.’ He rubbed his hands together enthusiastically. ‘You remember, Kit, that I told you how I had been compiling a dictionary of the native language from my interviews with the two captives before we left?’
‘I do. And were you able to learn more of the language?’
‘Indeed, indeed. It is most curious. Quite unrelated to any other language I have encountered. Remarkable. And the people are not so savage as we have been led to believe. With a little gentle guidance, I think they will come to accept true faith and civility. They express astonishment at our modern engines such as clocks and compasses, but they do not hate or fear them. When next you come to my rooms, Kit, I will show you the drawings I have made, and my wordlist. Who knows, they might even prove useful in Sir Francis’s codes!’
We all laughed at the idea of Sir Francis using the language of savages from the New World to outwit our country’s enemies. And I could not help smiling to myself that Harriot had not said one word of the Chesapeake expedition when I had seen him last. I had been very curious to hear about his adventures, but had waited for him to open the subject. However, all his enthusiasm on that occasion had been for optics. That was the very essence of him, and it was one of the things that made him so exciting as a teacher, the way he embraced so many branches of knowledge and opened up new countries of the mind where none had travelled before.
‘I have never returned your book on optics, Master Harriot,’ I said, getting up and fetching it from where it stood on our shelf of books.
‘You have read it? And what did you think?’
‘Very interesting. But I thought I noticed a few miscalculations.’
He beamed. ‘I hoped you would. When next you come to me, we will put our heads together and see whether we can do better.’ He put down his glass. ‘Tell Joan her cake is excellent. More? Ah, I think you can persuade me. Afterwards, shall we have more music? Once I am sure that I will not fill your recorder with blown cake crumbs, Dr Alvarez! Was that Byrd you were playing when I arrived?’
We made music far into the night and no more was said of the New World or mathematics or code-breaking or Sir Francis Walsingham.
Sir Francis, however, had not forgotten me. The next day, as we prepared to return to the hospital after our midday meal, Phelippes’s serving man, whom I now knew as Thomas Cassie, arrived with a summons for me.
‘Master Phelippes needs me this afternoon?’ I said. I was anxious to return to my patients and resented being fetched away like this.
‘No, Master Alvarez. It is Sir Francis himself who wishes to see you.’
My heart quickened uncomfortably in my chest. Why should Sir Francis want to see me? After that first interview, my dealings had been entirely with Thomas Phelippes, although Sir Francis would look into the office from time to time and discuss our work with us. Had Poley said something to betray me? I looked at my father for guidance.
‘Of course you must go, Kit,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I do not have too much work this afternoon. I can check your patients for you.’
No escape, then. Nevertheless, I picked up my satchel of medical supplies, in case there would be time for me to go to the hospital after seeing Sir Francis, and I followed Cassie out into the street. The increasing warmth of the sun brought the stench of the Smithfield slaughterhouses coiling about us. Leaving home now in answer to this unexpected summons, I was suddenly reminded of that other summons, back in January, when Simon had fetched me to the Marshalsea, setting all of this in motion. I had not seen Simon for some time, not since before the measles epidemic, and I found myself wishing quite painfully that we could meet again. Could we be friends? I knew so few people of my own age, apart from Peter Lambert at the hospital and Sara Lopez’s daughter Anne. Somehow I had warmed to Simon, strange as it seemed, when we came from such different worlds. Perhaps I would seek him out one day soon. But I did not question my reasons too closely.
Cassie left me at the door of the room which Sir Francis used as an office. I knocked and was told to come in. The room seemed unchanged since my nervous interview there weeks before, except that the gloomy winter light had been replaced by a cheerful sun which created a bright haze behind Sir Francis’s dark head. As I became accustomed to the dazzle, I noticed a few silver glints amongst the thick dark brown thatch of his hair and beard. He looked even more worn than when I had last seen him, his eyelids red as if he had been rubbing them and his skin pallid. He could not have been outside in this fresh new spring air, except on his hurried journeys to and fr
o to consult with the Queen or Lord Burghley.
‘Come in, Kit, come in.’ He got up and came round to the front of his desk, drawing two chairs together and sitting in one of them. He motioned me to the other.
When I was seated, wondering what on earth he could want with me, he said, ‘Thomas Phelippes is very pleased with your work. You are quick and neat, and have an excellent skill in deciphering new codes.’
I blushed and murmured something. Phelippes had never told me this himself.
‘You will have guessed,’ he went on, ‘that our work here has many strands, not just the interception of treasonous letters and the breaking of codes. I have informants in all the main countries of Europe, especially those which threaten us: France, Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, and the Papal States.’
I nodded, wondering where this was leading.
‘Here at home we also place informants where they can discover any plots that may be brewing amongst traitors on our own shores. I believe when you first encountered Robert Poley, he was imprisoned in the Marshalsea.’
‘Yes.’ My voice came out strained, for I did not care to remember that encounter. ‘I was summoned to attend him. At least, my father was, but he was attending Lord Burghley and I went in his stead. Poley believed he had been poisoned.’
‘The keeper sent for your father?’
‘He sent a boy with a message.’ Instinctively I decided to keep Simon’s name out of it.
‘And had he been poisoned?’
‘Oh, no. He had eaten bad oysters. I purged him.’
‘He cannot have enjoyed that.’ Sir Francis gave a small smile. ‘At any rate, he recovered quickly. I believe Thomas has told you that Poley had been placed in the Marshalsea to find out what he could from the Catholic priests held there, posing as a Catholic sympathiser himself. These priests are smuggled into the country by an organisation in France run by one William Allen, who hates our Queen, our church, and the country of his birth. Although these priests claim to be here merely to minister to the English Catholics, many are trained soldiers and assassins who would overthrow the state.’
