“My mother taught me as she taught me to write my letters. I’ll teach you.”
Andrew’s sketches were rough at first, but William made him practice. “Look and look again,” he insisted. “Don’t be afraid to smudge out what isn’t right.” For days he had Andrew draw circles and ovals to learn the shapes of heads and where ears, eyes, and mouths go. “For everyone it’s the same,” he said. “The sizes of heads differ, but where eyes are, the ears, the nose—that’s the same.”
Peter teased that the two of them would end up common face-painters.
“Let’s make masks,” Andrew suggested one afternoon. “We made masks for plays at my school—pictures we held on sticks in front of our faces for pantomimes. We did stories about the Romans and King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Once we made masks of the big figures in town—the Lord Mayor, the High Sheriff, the Bishop—and paraded around for the other boys at school.
“We could do a play for Durham House—the fable of the fox and crow. Can you make the face of a fox and the figure of a crow?”
“Sure!” said William.
He drew a fierce crow with a bright black-dot eye on a board Andrew found by the river. Crow black was easy enough, but fox red? How to get that color?
Andrew went to Pena. Pena took him to the kitchen, where they got a pot and mixed pig’s blood with flour and beet juice.
They rehearsed. Neither liked playing the fox, so they asked Peter if he would do it.
Peter wrinkled his nose and made sneering remarks about players and low-class street theater, but finally the chance to be the clever hero took him.
One night after supper, they gave their show in the refectory. Everyone agreed Peter made a good fox, sly and wheedling as he tricked the cheese from William the crow.
“What if you painted almost-likenesses of the Queen’s head and Mr. Raleigh’s?” Andrew asked that night as they whispered together.
“Why ‘almost’? I can do them to the life,” William protested.
“No. Make them just close enough to leave folks unsure.”
William gave Mr. Raleigh a feathered hat and pointed beard. The Queen got a drooping nose under a flaming red wig. They hinged her chin so she could open her mouth.
Andrew held the Raleigh mask before his face and said Mr. Raleigh’s lines as William pantomimed the Queen.
Mistress Witkens helped them with costumes, a length of fancy cloth for the Queen’s gown, blue velvet pants and a yellow shirt for Raleigh. They made props. The cheese became a sack of gold and a long flapping title deed with ribbons. They also wrote lines for Mr. Raleigh’s flattering.
“Madam, I hear it said at Court and even in the street that you are as kind as you are wise.”
The Queen shuffled and swished her gown as she nodded, the sack of treasure and the deed bobbing in her jaws.
“Truly, madam, it is reported that your realm, rich and glorious as it is, is but a faint reflection of your beauty.”
She tittered and bent her head in modesty as she fluttered her hands.
“And the lovely grace of your dancing, madam—it is the talk of every Court in the world and the envy of all women of quality.”
The Queen jigged a little and did an awkward turn, nearly falling.
“But those envious women hiss to each other that your voice is sour and cracking. Surely, madam, your voice is a fair match to your radiant face?”
At that, the Queen opened her mouth to sing and dropped her treasures.
“Oh, madam, I am honored,” said Raleigh, bowing low as he snatched them up, wrapping the title deed around his head like a crown and tucking the sack in his pants.
“Give it back!” the Queen yawped as she chased after Raleigh.
“Too late, madam,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m off for America!”
They tried out their play for Pena in the garden shed. They could hardly act for snickering at their cleverness. Pena’s grim face stifled their giggles.
“It is treason to mock the Queen,” he said when they’d finished. “Men are locked away in the Tower for less. Worse, you insult the man who helps you. Your joke is like the taunts made behind his back at Court. Shame!”
Pena took the masks and broke them up.
“I do this as a favor,” he said as he left with the pieces.
There was no whispering between the boys that night.
13
ANDREW’S LETTER HOME
Durham House
30 June, 1584
Dear Family and Rebecca,
I am well. I miss you all, and the dogs. I haven’t written before because I spend so much time writing for Mr. Raleigh, my hand cramps. My guts stopped up at first, but Pena, the gardener I study under, made me eat leaves and now I am better. He teaches me farming. We try Spanish seeds, but we have nothing ripe yet. Pena says this is because the English sun is not so hot as the sun in New Spain. He remembers Mr. Raleigh’s promise that if we grow anything of profit we will send seeds to you for Stillwell. I have my own plot. One thing I grow is a thick-leaved plant with sap that eases burns. Mr. Raleigh’s scientific man burned himself with gunpowder, face and hands, and the sap of that plant healed him.
Pena puts frogs in the cistern and makes me watch them swim. He says he will teach me to swim in the river. I don’t want to. The water is cold. Everything is in it. When the tide is out it smells. Nobody else swims here, but he does every day.
He laughs and makes up songs. He is never quiet. He works the soil with a hoe that has rings and bells on the handle. “Stink, stank, reek, rank/Rats along the riverbank,” he sings as he digs. He sings as loud as he can. He took me for a walk along the river. We saw a Turk walking on a rope and a bear with a ring through its nose dancing on its hind feet as its keeper played a flute and beat a drum. These things are free, but some people toss pennies for them. Pena tossed a halfpenny in the Turk’s hat.
My best friend here is William. We do plays together. He goes to Court for hawking and jousting. We made a play about people at Court, but Pena said it was mean. I don’t like the tall page Father met named Peter. He acts highborn, but William says he isn’t really better than we are.
I copy things for Mr. Raleigh until my hand hurts. He made me write extracts from his book about plants in New Spain. It says cacao and tobacco chewed together make the Indians so strong they can travel for days without food or water. Mr. Raleigh says he will make the experiment on himself. He takes no physician’s word for anything!
He praised my extract of the Spaniard’s book. When I told William at dinner, Peter yelled, “Good dog!” and made to pat me on the head. I barked and made him jump, so people laughed as much at him as me.
Sometimes I work with Mr. Harriot, studying how the natives live in America. Mr. Harriot will go there to write a report. He talks about America as much as Tremayne does.
Sundays, we go to services at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Mr. Harriot took me down below, where sixteen men work the bellows that blow through four hundred bronze pipes. The smallest is the size of my hand. The tallest goes up to the roof. The low notes go so deep the floor shakes. The high ones sound like birds. Last week the Queen’s preacher preached for two hours. A man goes up and down the aisles with a long black stick, poking those who doze off. He pokes a lot, men and women.
Yesterday William and I walked to the broad place in the river where ships dock. It is called the Pool. A sailor said some of the ships we saw were from India, Russia, and Constantinople. We passed the Tower. William says there is a deep pit there for the priests they catch. On London Bridge Tower the heads of traitors are stuck on pikes. There are dozens, like rotted squashes. I did not know we had so many traitors.
This halfpenny is for Rebecca for a hair ribbon. Mr. Raleigh’s geographer friend gave it to me. He’s called a dream traveler. I went to him to borrow a map. He saw my future in his magic glass, but I can’t tell it, because Mr. Harriot said repeating it to anyone would be like pouring vinegar into milk:
all the good will sour.
I think of every one of you every day and say my prayers.
Love,
Andrew
14
THE WINE MERCHANT’S CLERK
A few days after his visit to Doctor Dee, Andrew was again called from the garden to the turret. He met Mr. Harriot at the door as a small, shortsighted man slunk out.
Mr. Raleigh was pacing. He started speaking as they entered.
“Mr. Phelippes has just made report. He is one of Principal Secretary Walsingham’s chief decoders. He’s learned that a wine merchant in France has a new map showing the Spanish forts in the Caribbean. Our expedition will take on fresh water and provisions at one of the islands there. We need to know where the enemy is.”
Mr. Raleigh turned to the window and spoke as if he were addressing the gulls that were always circling and calling.
“Mr. Secretary wonders if some of my people could get this map. We have little time before the merchant must return it to the official in Paris he borrowed it from.
“The merchant trades spirits for American furs,” Mr. Raleigh went on. “He gathers information for the benefit of his trade and sells it to his Paris connection.”
He narrowed his eyes as he turned back.
“Andrew, your father said you have a rare sense of smell. A wine dealer’s chief instrument of trade is his nose. Do you have the nose of a wine dealer?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“We will find out.”
He pointed to a row of filled glasses, each one on a numbered paper, and an empty bowl.
“Sniff and taste. Match like with like. Swallow none: sniff and taste, then spit into the bowl.”
Another test! Andrew thought, his heart pounding. He did his best as he sniffed and sipped from the first glass, spat, then sampled the others the same way to find its match. Most were sour to his taste, but the third matched the first, and so it went. It wasn’t hard with the first three pairs. Of the seven glasses remaining, four were sweeter than the others. They stalled him.
His face was long as he set them aside and worked over the other three. He made one pair. The stray was not like any of the others. He was angry with himself, afraid he’d missed something. The men were waiting, watching. He finally gave up and said he thought the sweets were all the same.
Mr. Raleigh’s eyes were hooded. He took a paper and checked the numbers.
He showed it to Mr. Harriot. Andrew couldn’t read the man’s face. Then Mr. Harriot grinned and said quietly, “You have the gift.”
Andrew took a big breath as Mr. Raleigh resumed his pacing.
“So now we have a way of proving to the Frenchman that Andrew and his master are in the wine trade.
“Suppose,” he continued after a moment, “that a wine merchant and his clerk were to call on the Frenchman, offering to trade wine for furs on terms advantageous to the Frenchman. And suppose further that one of the samples they offered had been touched with drug. The Frenchman might enjoy a nap while the boy and his master made a survey of his papers and took what they needed.
“There won’t be time to copy.”
Mr. Raleigh explained that with one of Doctor Dee’s recipes, he’d made a tincture from the sap of poppies.
“The drug is tasteless, almost the color of water. A small drop in his glass will send a large man sleeping. It is called opium.”
He turned to Mr. Harriot.
“Andrew will do for our clerk, but who will be our wine merchant? We need a plain-mannered stranger we can trust who speaks French.”
“Me!” exclaimed Mr. Harriot.
“No,” said Mr. Raleigh, shaking his head slowly. “Our connection is too well known. I need someone rougher in manner than you, someone the foreign agents have never seen here.”
Andrew thought of Tremayne. He was rougher than Mr. Harriot, he spoke French, and he was no part of Mr. Raleigh’s circle.
“Perhaps my teacher at home?” he suggested.
He told them about Tremayne.
“Will he do it?” Mr. Raleigh asked.
“I think so, sir.”
“Why?”
“Because he is all for England in America.”
Mr. Raleigh smiled, then he narrowed his eyes.
“Do you trust him with your life?”
“Yes.”
“Is his manner courtly?”
“As courtly as mine.”
“Courtly enough, then!” said Mr. Raleigh with a friendly laugh. “Write your teacher that you need to see him. Your message must be something only he will understand. Do not sign it. I’ll read it before you write it final in the onion ink. You must assume now that everything we write here is read by others as soon as it leaves Durham House.”
Andrew warmed at the prospect of being sent back to Plymouth on a secret mission. He pictured some of his old schoolmates seeing him in Mr. Raleigh’s livery. He imagined letting out a hint of what he was about.
“What shall I say when I see Mr. Tremayne?” he asked.
“You will ask in my name if he will help us get the map.
“You will say nothing of this to anyone,” he added. “No one here, no one at home, is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said, looking down, sure that Mr. Raleigh had read his mind.
“You will travel in your country clothes.”
As Andrew was leaving, Mr. Raleigh called after him, “You will tell Peter and William I am sending you back because you are homesick.”
Andrew stopped like he’d been smacked.
“That last I don’t like, sir,” he said more quickly than was polite.
Mr. Raleigh gave him a sharp look. “You make bold to say so!”
Andrew stood silent as Mr. Raleigh glowered.
“You don’t like telling the others?” he asked.
Andrew nodded.
The man’s look softened. “I have pretended much and done many things I didn’t like,” he said. “I’m not asking of you a tenth part of what it took me to get here. You don’t like wearing a mask? That’s all I’m asking—that you wear a mask.
“Disguising is part of our work. Masks hide our purposes. In what we are about it’s dangerous for anyone extra to know who we are or what our business is. So we go in disguise. Do you understand now?”
Andrew nodded slightly.
“Tell me,” Mr. Raleigh asked, “have you ever met a stutterer?”
“Yes. One of my schoolfellows.”
“Did you notice he was not afflicted when singing or acting a part?”
Andrew thought for a moment. It was true.
“Yes.”
Mr. Raleigh opened his hands. “You’ll find it is the same with you. Some tasks are easier if you do them playing at being someone else.
“It’s like laughing when shamed. I hear you do that well. You have it in you to be one of my actors. Go play your part!”
Andrew half-smiled to himself as he left. He liked it that Mr. Raleigh thought he had it in him to be one of his actors. He could pretend homesickness as an actor. That wouldn’t hurt his pride.
He went to his desk and wrote Tremayne: “Pray meet at my cross midday Wednesday next. Yours for Eden.”
That the note was from Andrew and what they were to meet about, Tremayne would figure from the mention of Eden. With Andrew’s name in mind, he’d know their meeting place to be St. Andrew’s Church.
Mr. Raleigh nodded when he read it.
“Good. Now copy it in the onion ink. It may even puzzle the Spanish ambassador. He’s their chief spy here.”
Andrew turned to leave.
“Wait!” Mr. Raleigh called. “I want to try your nose once more.
“What’s this?” he asked, pushing a vial of black liquid to the boy’s face.
Andrew sniffed and jerked back. It smelled like strong tar. It made his eyes water.
“Naphtha of the Persians,” Mr. Raleigh said with a grim smile. “Now match the glasses again.”
Andr
ew couldn’t. He couldn’t smell anything.
Mr. Raleigh smiled a tight smile as he nodded. “Watch that no one does that to you again. Your sense will return. The naphtha numbed it.”
He poured some into a dish and struck a spark. Andrew jumped back as the liquid burst into flame with a thick smoke.
“Useful for mischief, if mischief is required,” Mr. Raleigh said quietly. “Monsieur Pena and I once escaped a trap with it. As the Frenchmen crept up to slit our throats, we gave them a splash of naphtha and set them on fire.”
Andrew walked slowly back to the dormitory, imagining Frenchmen with drawn knives in the shadows. At the window, sunlight burned like naphtha.
15
A VISIT HOME
That night in the dormitory, Andrew told William loud enough to awaken Peter, “I’m being sent back tomorrow because I’m homesick.”
Somehow saying his lines as an actor and not as himself was easy.
He could tell, watching William’s face, his friend guessed something was up. “Will you return?” William asked.
“I don’t know.”
Peter giggled. It was an ugly sound. Andrew lay in bed thinking to choke him.
The next morning, Mr. Harriot gave him money for his trip and a black band to tie around his right arm above the elbow.
“Folks will assume you are in mourning. Be grave,” he said with a wink.
The boy rode hard. He wore the black band and kept to himself where he fed and rested. There were few questions.
The sea wind was sharp against him as he rode down to the coast from Exeter. By the time he reached Plymouth, it was blowing a gale with a fine stinging rain.
He stabled his mount and climbed the twisting narrow stone-paved lanes up to St. Andrew’s Church. The few folks out were muffled against the weather.
He slipped into the church. It was like a huge upside-down ship, dark and silent. It smelled of soap and candles. The gloom was like a mist. He didn’t see Tremayne. Had he got the message? Had someone given him the tincture to read it?
He could hardly breathe. Every sound made him jump. Then a shape he recognized slipped around a corner in the shadows and signaled with his hand.
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