by Ann Swinfen
‘They were my patients, Sir Francis. That was a very different situation.’
‘I concede that. But you have shown that you can talk to them easily, they accepted you more readily than the older physicians.’
I wonder who had told him this. Did he have an agent even inside St Bartholomew’s?
‘Besides,’ he said, ‘I need a young man to get in amongst the young soldiers, in a way Berden and Gifford and the other older men cannot. I had thought to use Kit Marlowe, who has done this work before, but he has disappeared again.’
The name hit me in the face like the slap of an icy wave.
‘Kit Marlowe?’ I said, my voice not altogether steady.
‘Aye. I believe you met him at Sir Walter’s house some months ago.’
Was there nothing this man did not know?
‘I did,’ I said. Then, daringly, ‘I did not like him.’
He smiled grimly. ‘I believe he insulted you. You have every reason not to like him. He is not always a likeable fellow. But clever. Very clever. If sometimes rash and sometimes violent.’ He paused. ‘Will you do this for us, Kit? Berden will be with you for part of the time, and you can always turn to him if you are in difficulty.’
In difficulty? That was a strange way to phrase it. I would be in danger of my life, if there were traitors and if they suspected me. I heaved a great sigh.
‘How long would this last?’
‘You would be home by Christmas,’ he said, and smiled.
Christmas. I remembered last Christmas and the relief of being free of all this secrecy and plotting.
‘Very well,’ I said with resignation. ‘I will go.’
He stood up and reached again for the flask of wine.
‘I think you need another glass of this,’ he said. ‘It is setting in for a frost this evening. Berden had other affairs to attend to today, but he will be here again tomorrow afternoon. If you can be here about two of the clock, we will discuss together how best to proceed. Berden is a good man, very experienced. You have worked with him before.’
‘Yes,’ I said dully, accepting another glass of wine. ‘He is a good man. I would certainly trust him. But we worked together here in England. In a strange country, I don’t know . . .’
‘All will be well,’ he said. ‘I have great belief in your talents, Kit.’
Small comfort. Walking home through the frosty night, with the hood of my cloak pulled over my head and my feet plodding slowly over the familiar cobbles, I felt nothing but dread. Yet how could I refuse a man like Sir Francis Walsingham?
By Newgate the chestnut seller stood stamping his feet against the cold. There were no other customers nearby.
‘A farthing’s worth,’ I said, ‘and another for the prisoners.’
‘Right you are, master,’ he said eagerly filling two twists of paper.
I pushed one through the grid to the prisoners. I could see nothing of them but a white blur of faces. Then I walked on, peeling my chestnuts and leaving a trail of shells behind me all the way to Duck Lane. Fond as I am of chestnuts, they turned to dust on my tongue.
The following morning I asked permission to leave the hospital before midday, and it was granted. It seemed that Sir Francis had made his usual arrangement with the governors, and they must have instructed the assistant superintendant, who ran the day-to-day affairs of St Bartholomew’s. I also told my father that I would not come home for our usual dinner. I felt a compelling urge to see and talk to Simon. He had called a few times at the hospital while we were treating the soldiers from Sluys, but there had never been time for more than the exchange of a few words. I told myself that I wanted to draw on his experience of acting, as I had done before when undertaking a spying mission for Sir Francis. He was adept at taking on different characters and he would surely be able to give me advice once again. If I had other reasons for this urgent need to see him, I concealed them from myself.
At the Theatre, I found Guy Bingham and James Burbage backstage, seated either side of a wooden packing case, which they were using as a table. They were planning the music and the comic interludes for the next production and looked up distracted when I asked for Simon.
‘He hasn’t come in yet, Kit,’ Guy said. ‘Probably still at his lodgings in Holywell Lane.’
James Burbage grunted. ‘If you see him, remind him I’ll dock his wages if he isn’t here in time for rehearsal. Two o’clock sharp. We must run through all the scenes of tomorrow’s play before this afternoon’s performance of The Spanish Tragedy.’
‘Let us hope that is a prophetic title,’ Guy said, ‘for next year.’
Even here in the playhouse I could not escape the foretelling of next year’s invasion.
‘Where?’ I said. ‘Which house in Holywell Lane?’
‘I thought you would know.’ Guy looked surprised. ‘Tall thin house, with three jetties, nearly blocking the lane. Yellow front door.’
‘Yellow!’ I felt myself colouring, that they should think I knew Simon’s lodgings, but there was no reason to suppose that they meant anything by it.
‘Aye. Yellow.’ He laughed. ‘The landlady’s husband paints our scenery. He used some left-over paint from Apollo’s chariot to paint his front door. You can’t miss it.’
‘I don’t suppose I can.’ I thanked them and retraced my steps to Holywell Lane, walking back a little way towards Bishopsgate. Many of the players had lodgings here, but the house with the yellow door was unmistakeable. The building loomed over the lane, its jettied upper stories – almost certainly added illegally – made it look as if it was about to topple over on to unsuspecting passersby.
I banged at the door, but there was no answer. After I had banged twice more without success, I turned away, sure that there was no one at home. But there, coming along the lane, was Simon, carrying a basket of food.
‘Kit!’ He seemed genuinely delighted to see me, despite my long neglect of my friends from the playhouse.
‘Come in.’ He threw open the door, which was not locked. I remembered that when we had first met he had been amused that we locked the door of our poor cottage in Duck Lane, until I explained the need to keep our medicines safe.
I hesitated. ‘I thought we could go to an ordinary for a meal. I must be at Seething Lane by two, and Master Burbage asked me to remind you of your rehearsal.’
‘No need.’ He flourished his basket. ‘I have everything here that we need. Bread still warm from the oven. Cheese. Some bacon I can cook over my fire. A flask of ale. Some late pears. Come up. We are at the very top.’
I followed him through the yellow door and up the first flight of stairs, solidly built and surely as old as the lower part of the house. The next flight had clearly been added a long time ago, for although they were crudely made they were sturdy and showed years of wear. The next flight lacked a handrail, clung precariously to the plaster wall and trembled under our feet. The final floor was reached by a steep ladder, which was not even fixed to the wall. The whole upper floor was an attic, divided into three rooms by thin partitions, their doorways covered by curtains. Simon led the way into the middle room, which looked out over the lane through a half-circle window peering through the thatch of the roof. The floor sloped so steeply down towards the outer wall that it nearly propelled me through the window. The house broke every fire regulation in London, but being outside the Wall, it probably escaped the hand of the magistrates.
I looked around with interest. Simon had grown in the two years I had known him and was now a handspan taller than I. His head just cleared the beams supporting the underside of the roof, but where it dipped down to the outside wall, he would have to stoop. There were two truckle beds, with bedclothes in a tangled heap. A small table and two joint stools were piled up with discarded clothes and papers – probably the scripts of plays. On the floor were several used plates and dirty ale mugs, in one of which several flies had drowned. I wrinkled my nose.
‘Pigs live better,’ I said drily.
/> Simon looked around, as if he were seeing the room for the first time.
‘I suppose we should clear up, but we’re seldom here, except to sleep.’
‘We?’
‘I share with Christopher Haigh. It’s cheaper that way.’
He began throwing the clothes from the stools on to the beds, and swept the papers on to the floor.
‘It’s disgusting,’ I said. ‘If we let the wards fall into this state, we would be driven out of the hospital.’
‘Well, this isn’t a hospital,’ Simon said cheerfully. He crossed to the window, automatically bending his head as he neared the outside wall. He threw open the window and a blast of cold air blew in, making me huddle my cloak around my shoulders. He leaned outside, groping for something at the side of the window.
‘Good,’ he said, ‘Christopher hasn’t eaten it all.’ He held up a packet wrapped in greasy paper. ‘Cold beef.’
‘You have a larder out there?’ I was smiling.
‘Aye, a big earthenware pot. Christopher fixed it on a bracket. He is not such a fine gentleman as he would like you to think. His father was a carpenter, which is useful. He knocked up the table and stools for us.’
He closed the window and laid the packet of beef on the table beside his basket. There was a small fireplace on the inner partition wall, containing an even smaller fire, but he soon poked it up and added a shovel of sea coal. While he busied himself with a frying pan and the bacon, I began to fold the clothes into tidy piles. I straightened the beds and laid the papers – they were indeed play scripts – in a neat stack on a rickety shelf nailed above one of the beds.
‘Where do you clean your dishes?’ I asked. I looked at the rancid grease and a creeping black mould with distaste. ‘We cannot eat off these.’
‘There are some clean plates over there.’ He jerked his head towards a dark corner where there stood an ancient-looking cupboard I had not noticed. I found two chipped plates and carried them to the table. There were mouse dropping on the top of the cupboard, but inside it looked clean.
Simon slid half the bacon on to each of the plates and poured the dripping over it.
‘Help yourself,’ he said, pushing the basket towards me. He lifted out a large round loaf and sawed slices off it, directly on the table, which I noticed was scored all over where bread had been cut before.
‘You must run out of clean plates eventually,’ I said.
‘Then we take everything down to the yard at the back and wash them with water we carry over from the conduit. You saw how many stairs there are. We don’t do it every day, only when everything is dirty. Were there any clean ale mugs in the cupboard?’
I shook my head.
‘Oh, well, then we’ll just have to drink from the jack.’
He took the ale jack from the basket, pulled out the cork and passed it to me. I drank gingerly at first, doubtful of what it might be like, but it was excellent, so I drank thirstily, then handed it back.
We mopped up the bacon dripping with bread, then moved on to cold beef and cheese, and finished with the pears. They were the hard little pears that were still edible as late in the year as this and a welcome end to the meal.
‘So,’ said Simon, ‘now the soldiers are all gone from the hospital, are you working with Walsingham once more?’
‘He sent for me yesterday,’ I said, pushing my stool back from the small table so I could stretch out my legs.
‘More code-breaking?’ Simon knew what I did in Phelippes’s office, though I was sworn not to reveal the contents of the papers I worked on.
‘I thought that was what they needed,’ I said. ‘But when Cassie told me it was Sir Francis who wanted to see me, I was afraid it might be . . . well, might be something more serious.’
‘More serious?’ Simon looked puzzled, and then concerned. ‘You mean, like last year, when he sent you off, pretending to be a tutor to some gentleman’s children? And then you were a scruffy messenger boy.’
‘Aye, something like that.’ I found I was twisting one of the buttons of my doublet round and round and released it before I pulled it off. ‘He is sending me on a mission to the Low Countries, carrying despatches to the Earl of Leicester.’
Simon gave a low whistle, then stood up and piled our dirty plates on top of those on the floor. When he sat down again, he passed me the ale jack, but I shook my head.
‘I need to keep my brain clear. I am to meet Sir Francis and Nicholas Berden at Seething Lane at two o’clock, to discuss the mission.’
Simon took a long pull at the ale jack, then recorked it and placed it back in the basket.
‘It is more than simply carrying despatches, isn’t it?’
I nodded silently.
He clasped his hands on the table in front of him and leaned toward me. ‘He’s asking you to spy for him, I’ll be bound.’
I had never told Simon what I was doing on my various missions for Walsingham during the previous year, but he was no fool. He had guessed that I was caught up in foiling the Babington conspiracy, with its aim to kill the Queen, to use French troops under the Duke of Guise to invade England, and to put Mary Stuart on the throne. He knew without my telling him that as well as code-breaking and other activities with Thomas Phelippes, I had been used by Walsingham for spying.
I nodded. Perhaps if I did not speak the words, I had not, strictly, revealed anything.
‘Come, Kit,’ he said. There was a touch of impatience in his tone. ‘I swear that you can trust me. I will say nothing outside this room. I will keep your secrets. You know I would not betray you.’
I did know it, and said so.
‘At first, all I have to do is deliver the despatches from Sir Francis – and possibly from Burghley and the Queen as well – to the Earl of Leicester, somewhere in the Low Countries. I do not know where yet. I suppose they will tell me this afternoon. Leicester will inform me of any suspicions he has. Well, he talked of suspicions, but nothing more specific than that. I hope the whole mission is not a fool’s errand.’
‘And then?’
‘And then I am supposed to hang about where the soldiers gather when they are not on military duty. Ale houses, mostly, I expect. And . . . just listen, I think. See whether anyone lets anything slip.’
‘It sounds somewhat vague.’
‘I know. And what if there are traitors, and they suspect that I am one of Sir Francis’s agents? I’m no Berden or Gifford, with years of practice at this.’
‘But you are good at playing a part.’
I looked at him in alarm, but there was nothing in his air to suggest that he had guessed the part I played every day.
‘Remember last year. You had no difficulties then.’
‘Well . . .’ I also remembered how the Fitzgeralds’ fifteen-year-old daughter had tried to seduce me and felt a bubble of slightly hysterical laughter rising in my throat. I turned it into a cough.
‘I did think you might have some ideas how I should play this part.’
Simon clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back, tipping his stool on its back legs.
‘The first question is: What part are you playing? You are not meant to be one of the soldiers yourself, are you?’
‘I don’t think so.’ I was startled at the thought.
‘Probably Sir Francis has something in mind for you. How do his agents usually pass themselves off?’
‘I am not sure. I think sometimes they pretend to be merchants or traders of some kind, as it allows them to move around from town to town, or even from country to country. In fact, some of them really are traders. Sir Francis has links with all the great English merchant houses.’ I thought of the cousins of Dr Lopez and Dr Nuñez, whose trade routes and mercantile houses in Europe and the Ottoman Empire served a second purpose for Walsingham.
‘Clearly you are too young to be taken for a merchant yourself, but you could be in the service of one of the houses, carrying orders for goods, overseeing the shipping of goods. Does th
at sound right?’
‘Aye. I think so.’ I tried to imagine myself as a young clerk working for Dr Nuñez. It was not so unlikely. I would need to carry quills and a portable ink well. Perhaps empty my satchel of medicines and fill it with papers.
‘Then you need to think about your costume.’ Simon was staring over my head.
‘Costume?’
‘Your clothes. I’m thinking of this as we would stage it in the playhouse. You are a capable young servant, already a trustworthy clerk who can be sent on his master’s business abroad . . .’ He pondered for a few minutes.
‘If this were a comedy, we would dress you one way, if a tragedy or a history, quite another.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Your role is to see and hear, without being noticed, to eavesdrop but remain in the shadows. In a comedy, we want the audience to know that the eavesdropper is there. They join in the fun. Those who are being spied upon do not know what is happening, but the audience does. So we dress the spy in bright colours. He makes his presence very obvious, the audience watches his every move. But the poor lovers – it is usually lovers – simply do not see him, even when he is right under their noses.’
I nodded. I had watched this kind of scene in comedies myself.
‘Now in a tragedy or a history, we want something different. The spy lurks in the darkness. Perhaps the audience does not even know he is there until everyone else has left the stage after revealing their secrets. Then he comes forward. There is the shocked realisation that the spy has heard the secrets and terrible consequences will follow. Do you see?’
I nodded again.
‘So in this case we dress the spy in dull, inconspicuous clothes, so that he can blend with his surroundings, unnoticed. I think that is what you should have in mind.’
He let his stool fall forward again with a clatter.
‘That cloak of yours.’ He point to where I had laid it across one of the beds. ‘Too pale.’
It was the soft undyed cream of natural wool. I realised what he meant. Even in the dark corner of an ale house, it would stand out, drawing attention to itself.
