The Secret Diary of Thomas Snoop, Tudor Boy Spy

by Philip Ardagh

  I dreamed of The Lady Anna last night and of her twin. For, of course, once I had the chance to clear my mind and think logically, that can be the only conclusion: that there are TWO of them.

  I don’t mean that they are literally twins, or sisters, even – though, on the one occasion I saw them, their likeness was extraordinary – but that there is The Lady Anna and one other who is her likeness. A double, like a reflection in a mirror given life. But who is this other Lady Anna? And what does this mean?

  Though still keeping my eyes and ears open for anything else out of the ordinary, it seemeth obvious to me that the MOST extraordinary thing I have encountered since my arrival is the two Annas, so I shall make her the centre of my investigation.

  Down in the kitchen, I found the one-armed Garble shouting out his orders as usual, and his small army of staff busying themselves like the worker bees in my father’s skeps96.

  I greeted him with a wave of the arm as though sent on an errand and with no time to delay, and slipped out into the gardens from a rear entrance.

  Despite the early hour, I was not alone. Two men I knew to be Lord Roebuckle and the Most Noble Thomas Casement, Duke of Hampton, were deep in conversation of a seemingly relaxed nature. I was able to catch a snatch of conversation:

  “—and, as we passed through Laughton, the wheel shaft of our carriage broke clean in two!” said the duke.

  “And the duchess97?” asked a concerned Roebuckle, “She was unharmed?”

  The duke snorted. “She was less flustered than I! But the reason I tell you this is that our unscheduled stop resulted in my witnessing some most extraordinary entertainment of which I have heard but never seen with mine own eyes. Until now!”

  He paused for effect.

  “Pray tell,” said Roebuckle obligingly.

  “Why, it is the fine art of shin-kicking98, where two worthy opponents kick each other in the shins with as much force as possible. It had been our intention to take sanctuary in a hostelry whilst repairs to our carriage were undertaken but a crowd had gathered outside,” the duke continued. “Our arrival coincided with the local shin-kicking champion, one Watt Thatcher, being challenged by a certain John Thatcher – no relation – from another shire99. This we learned from one of the many people circling the two shin-kickers to create an impressive crowd. There was much cheering for the local man with cries of ‘Watt! Watt! Watt!’ ‘We normally cry ‘Thatcher!’ your grace100,’ some jangler101 in the crowd explained to me, mightily excited by proceedings, ‘but that would not be of much use on this occasion!’”

  “The sport of the common man,” Lord Roebuckle commented. “Rather different from our own pursuits.”

  “It seemed to me that the challenger, John, had an unfair advantage because he appeared to be wearing special boots with metal attached to the toes,” said the Duke of Hampton, “Every kick from both man was accompanied by an ‘Oooo!’ or an ‘Ahhh!’ from large portions of the crowd. To say that it looked painful would be like saying that sitting in the middle of a roaring fire is a little hot for one’s behind!”

  Both men roared with laughter.

  “And who, pray, won, your grace?”

  “The eventual victor was the local man, Watt Thatcher. His opponent, metal-toe-capped boots or not, lay rolling on the ground clutching – thy guessed it – his shins! The crowd was delighted, shouting abuse, the most polite of which was ‘Cod’s head102!’”

  “Extraordinary!”

  “I must confess that, despite my initial reservations, I found it a most exhilarating sport to watch, but the duchess was less impressed. ‘It’s just two men kicking each other,’ she reasoned, but I do not expect a woman to appreciate the finer art of such a sport.”

  And that was the full extent of what I could hear without risk of being called an eavesdropper.

  So what did I learn from this of possible importance? That the shaft in the duke’s carriage broke. Could this have been a deliberate attempt to harm him, or an attempt to prevent him from reaching Goldenhilt? Or was this merely an excuse for the duke to pay a visit to a hostelry where he might have a secret liaison with a Spanish spy? Or did the shaft simply break because it was an accident? So many questions, but the information stored away: the Duke and Duchess of Hampton had a seemingly unplanned stop in Laughton.

  The remaining people I saw about the gardens were servants, either of the Earl of Drayshire’s household or of our noble visitors. I caught up with my friend Mark Tollman – victim of mob football, a game more violent still than shin-kicking – and we walked together along a gravel path.

  Just then a very

  shadow was cast over the pair of us then gone. It was Scullion.

  “Woah!” said Mark Tolland in surprise. “Did I imagine that, or did an OGRE just pass us by?”

  I grinned. “That is Scullion the spit-boy,” I said. “He is mighty tall, is he not?”

  Mark shook his head in disbelief. “Tall?” he said. “Tall? If he were any larger, he would have to be declared a separate country in his own right!”

  I wished Mark a good day, and moved on.

  I caught a glimpse of the spit-boy in the herb garden. I was surprised to see him carefully pull up a particular plant by thumb and forefinger, with great care for a man with fists like hams.

  Now I entered the maze. I had every confidence that I would not get lost for two reasons:

  Firstly, I had studied the single route to the centre and out again on the map I had been provided, showing the layout of the house and garden.

  Secondly, I had overheard a trick as to how to defeat it. If I kept my left hand touching the left-hand hedge wall as I walk around it – even when I took the wrong path, reach a dead-end and had to turn round – then it would eventually lead me to the centre.

  I wanted to see if the maze could yield any clues as to the mystery of the two Lady Annas.

  96 Tudor beehives were called basket hives or skeps. They were usually conical and made of braided straw, and kept in ‘bee boles’, alcoves especially built into the south-facing walls of big houses. Bee-keeping was a popular pastime in Tudor Britain. Interestingly, honey bees were not black-and-yellow-striped as we know today, but black.

  97 A duke’s wife has the title of duchess.

  98 No, this isn’t one of Thomas’s mistakes in writing in code. Shin-kicking was, indeed, a Tudor sport. Ouch!

  99 In Tudor times, and before, many people gained their family name from the profession that the men folk were mainly involved in. The original Thatchers would have thatched rooves. Tylers tiled. The Baker family would have baked, and so on. This is why Smith is such a common name: because there were so many types of smith (people who worked with metal): blacksmith, goldsmith, arrowsmith, bladesmith, coppersmith, locksmith and – later – gunsmith, to name just a few.

  100 Your grace is the correct ‘form of address’ when speaking to a duke, in the same way ‘my lord’ or ‘your lordship’ would be when addressing a lord.

  101 The Tudor slang for chatterbox: someone who spoke a lot!

  102 A blockhead. In other words: an idiot.

  Another day hath passed since I have had the opportunity to update events in this diary. I was interrupted by a commotion last night as I was writing up my observations. It was late at night and I was writing by candlelight in my chamber when a servant, Stephen – a boy of about my age but not my birth103 – burst in, without so much a knock or a by-your-leave, urging me to find Master Tundy that instant because there had been a sighting of a ghost.

  Yes, a ghost!

  My first thought was that maybe my original suspicion that there might be witchcraft involved in the conjuring up of a second Lady Anna had been correct. For cannot witches also conjure ghostly apparitions or even raise the dead?

  I asked the servant Stephen to tell me more as we both hurried to the door, but he was poorly informed. Apparently the earl himself had stumbled upon him, demanding the whereabouts of Master Tundy, who was neither in his c
hamber nor his steward’s office and was nowhere to be found.

  (I stored this piece of information with interest, despite the matter in hand.)

  His lordship was saying that not one but TWO guests had witnessed a ghost upon the staircase and that he required his steward this instant!

  As I ran in search of Master Tundy, I remembered a piece of advice given to me by Lord Severn, ‘Let the clergy deal with God. We deal in what is before us. I have never encountered something seemingly inexplicable that cannot be explained by Earthly means.’

  I found the steward in the kitchen. He had prepared himself a [small squeal]104 which was laid out on a pewter platter105 before him. He looked somewhat guilty at being discovered!

  What was it Garble the cook had said? ‘The only time he ain’t bellowin’ is when he’s making sure he hath more than his fair share of my fill!’

  I quickly told him what had happened and we hurried to the staircase where the Earl of Drayshire was waiting for him.

  Standing at the steward’s side, I soon learned what was said to have occurred:

  One of the guests, the Lady Mulberry, had turned the bend in the staircase, having been walking up from below, and caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure walking down the stairs ahead of her, then walking through a wall. I’ve little doubt what her ladyship saw would have been put down to tiredness and a trick of the flickering candlelight were it not for the fact that the Duchess of Hampton had been coming down the stairs at the same time. She had caught sight of a figure walking just ahead of her on the landing and starting down the stairs but when, moments later, the duchess herself had reached the stairs, the figure had gone and the only person there was Lady Mulberry coming up them, who let out a cry!

  “Where are the ladies now, my lord?” asked Master Tundy.

  “I have put them together in a side chamber,” said the earl. “Lady Mulberry is quite hysterical and the Duchess of Hampton is calming her. They could not be less alike. The duchess has no time for fingle-fangles.106 She is very much a no-nonsense person, for which I thank the Lord. Were both ladies hysterical, I suspect we’d wake the household.”

  The last thing the earl wanteth, with the Hall full of noble guests, is fear and rumour about a haunting!

  “What would you have me do, my lord?” asked Master Tundy.107

  “Do?” asked the Earl of Drayshire. He had been in such a hurry to call upon his steward but, now that he’d found him, he didn’t seem sure how to proceed. “Do? You have been given the task of ensuring that the week runs smoothly and that my guests are happy. I would have you sort this!”

  With that, he turned and went up the stairs to his chamber and, presumably, to his bed and to sleep.

  The steward turned to me. “Apparently, we are to sort this, young Snoop,” he said. “You see if you can encourage the ghost to reappear. If it does, plead with it to disappear again and never to come back and upset our guests. I, meanwhile, shall speak to the ladies, beseech them to say nothing to anyone but their husbands, and ensure that they are escorted to their beds.”

  “Why me, Master Tundy?” I asked.

  “Why you what, Thomas?”

  “Why am I the one to deal with the ghost, Master Tundy? I know nothing of ghosts or ghouls or spectres.”

  “I thought that should be obvious,” replied the steward, his grinning face half hidden in the flickering candlelight. “I know nothing about them either, but I do know how to calm distraught guests, and it is best to employ my energies where my expertise lies!”

  And that is why, at some ungodly hour at the dead of night, I was walking up and down the wooden staircase wondering what I should be doing.

  I stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up, wondering roughly where Lady Mulberry had been when she had seen – or thought she had seen – the apparition ahead of her. I wish I could have interviewed her personally rather than hear the story second-hand, but that is, of course, not possible.

  I noted the position of the window, wondering if she might somehow have seen an image of a portrait somehow reflected in candlelight in the glass and back onto the wall…but there were no portraits on the stairwell walls and, more importantly, coming down, the Countess had also seen a figure disappear.

  I tapped every inch of panelling and plaster along the wall in the turn of the staircase, pressing my ear to the wood as I went. My excitement mounting, there was nothing more I could do without daylight, so I returned to my chamber, blew out my [sandal]108 and fell into a deep sleep.

  The following morning – in other words, this morning – there was no gossip about ghosts or apparitions from the servants, which was impressive. Those who had witnessed the previous night’s antics must have been ordered to hold their tongues, and have done so. I wondered whether Lady Mulberry and the Duchess of Hampton would be as discreet or, when they arose at a later hour, the haunting would become the talk of the guests.

  I was up at dawn and slipped out into the garden. The grass beneath my feet was wet with dew but my eyes were upward, studying the back of the Hall. I could make out the large window that illuminates the staircase and yes – there! – that was what I was looking for. It was so difficult to spot at first that it would only be visible for someone really looking out for it, such as myself!

  To call it a window would be misleading for, today, our windows have glass. It was more like a glassless window of a castle or, better still, more like a hole through which one might fire an arrow! But I suspect that this oblong109 hole – the size of four missing bricks or so – has a very different purpose: to give light and air to a priest hole!

  A priest hole is a tiny secret room in which Catholics hide their priest if the authorities come calling. The entrance is disguised, and its window – if it has one – must be also. I believe what the lady and the duchess saw was not a ghost walking through a wall but a robed priest disappearing through a secret entrance to the hole…

  …which means that Lord Severn’s intelligence was right and that there are Roman Catholic plotters at the Hall, but not as guests. It is William de Grieff, the Earl of Drayshire himself. He continues to follow the old faith!

  This is the most extraordinary piece of information. The earl is seen as a close friend of the king. If I am right – and with a priest hole built in the newest part of his house I cannot see how this cannot be so – then he is a Catholic. But does that mean that he is in league with the Spanish against King Edward? It is this part that I must be sure of before I report my findings.

  From last night’s investigation of the panelling up the stairs, confirmed by today’s positioning of the tiny window, I was now confident that I knew the priest hole’s location.

  I decided that I must investigate this further – under the cover of darkness – as soon as the opportunity arose.

  Once I realised the significance of my discovery, I also realised that I must tell Master Tundy nothing of it. After all, the Earl of Drayshire is his master and who knows – he may also be in league with the Spanish at his master’s bidding! But why, if he knew about the priest hole, would he ask me to investigate the ghost and risk its discovery, rather than saying that he would do it, and thus be sure to keep it secret?

  Then it occurred to me. It might be more important for him to encourage the ladies to say nothing… and he simply thinks of me as an assistant, and not a highly trained spy! He expected me to find nothing, in turn.

  So I was decided. I would tell Master Tundy that our ghostly visitor had left no trace.

  Enough of this. I must now return to another equally extraordinary set of events which occurred yesterday, which I had been in the process of writing up last night when Stephen had burst into my room and matters had taken such a sudden turn.

  I had reached the point when I had entered the maze. I used the trick of keeping my left-hand to the left hedge and soon found myself in the centre. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I’d find… but it certainly wasn’t The Lady Anna herself.

 
I am not sure which of us was more surprised. She or I! My heart started beating like a barber’s drum.110 She had been seated at a small stone bench but jumped to her feet on my arrival.

  “Lady Anna!” I said.

  She looked at me, clearly having no idea who I was. She somehow looked both frightened and relieved at the same time.

  “Good morrow,” she said.

  “’Tis I, Thomas Snoop,” I said.

  “Of course,” she said. “You are here with…?”

  “I work here, m’lady,” I said. “With Master Tundy, the steward. I’m Lord Snoop’s nephew.”

  “Of course,” she said, a second time. “Then… Then why are you in the maze?”

  I had been studying The Lady Anna de Grieff as we spoke, not with a casual eye but with that of a trained professional. I looked particularly at her earlobes, eyes and hands – those parts of a body which are hardest to disguise. And it was her hands which gave her away. They were rough, not smooth.

  The discovery made my heart skip a beat. This young lady who stood before me now was an imposter. She was so like The Lady Anna but was not The Lady Anna.

  “I was asked by Master Tundy to familiarise myself with the maze, your ladyship,” I lied, “in case any of your father’s noble visitors should become lost and require assistance in finding their way out.”