The Spy of Venice

by Benet Brandreth

  ‘So, my news was profitable after all.’

  ‘Not yet, not yet.’ Oldcastle waggled a finger. ‘Sir Henry must take soundings first. There was much talk about the delicacy of his embassy, the troubled lands we would cross, the dangers and opportunities of Venice. He demands men he can trust. I ask you, do Hemminges and I not scream trustworthiness in our every breath?’

  He did not wait for reply. ‘All the more reason to do great work on your poem. It was at my recommendation after all that you received the commission. Do not show my judgment false. Something truly scandalous about Greene is called for. My, how he will rage at you for it.’

  William thought Oldcastle’s enjoyment at his predicament most unbecoming. Misguided too.

  ‘Greene will not know of my involvement,’ he reminded Oldcastle. ‘He’ll think it Sir Henry’s work.’

  Oldcastle raised an eyebrow in response. ‘Tush, lad. Everyone will know. Sir Henry’s care is not to be seen as the best poet but as the man who can hire the best. Oh, Greene will know. Know and care too. Now set to it.’

  Their best conscience is not to leave’t undone, but keep’t unknown

  It was a private room, upstairs at the Star on Fleet Street. Small and sparely furnished, the sound of the tavern below and the stink of the River Fleet beyond the window filtering up to fill the space. No one would choose it for romance. It was no blossomed bower with bed of gentle moss. It did, however, have two doors; one reached by the stairs at the front and one by those at the back. Seeing one man enter by the front stairs no one need know another had entered by the back. How Constanza Briaga knew of it William did not like to ask.

  William admired her hair, so dark as to seem ripples of ebony. For a moment he forgot they were arguing.

  ‘I would rather you were the subject,’ William protested.

  ‘And yet I am not,’ said Constanza.

  William wished he had never mentioned his commission from Sir Henry. A boast to Constanza had become a battleground. So it had been at each of their meetings. Constanza had a limitless capacity for finding the hidden insult in even the most fulsome praise. To talk of others in her presence was insult in itself. Were she not so fair, William thought, would I endure this Sisyphean courtship? So far there was little to show for it.

  Constanza’s invitation to meet had reached him at a melancholy moment. Sir Henry’s commission weighed upon William. When his poetry had been for his pleasure alone, it flowed from him freely. Writing for another seemed to dam the river. The clock tolled the time till he was supposed to present his poem to Sir Henry; he had nothing to show. It is one thing to think one’s hand stayed by the demands of responsibilities and the expectations of parents. It is another to find oneself freed of constraints and the hand still not moving. William’s melancholy was the worse for feeling that, in a London full of frustrations and disappointments, opportunity had presented itself and he was unable to seize it.

  He had seized instead on the distraction of her invitation. Constanza Briaga was a mystery in which he could lose himself. Strange above all other things was her interest in him. He had seen her the first time shortly after he arrived in London. She had sat quietly listening to the musicians, her father among them, entertain the barristers of the Middle Temple. Dark haired and olive skinned, a bird of exotic plumage. He’d shared a meal with the musicians that night.

  ‘Is it polite to stare?’ she’d leaned to his ear to ask him as she passed to her place at the table.

  ‘No,’ he’d whispered back, ‘but staring at the sun I shall be blinded anyway. The punishment follows the pleasure.’

  Not his best line. Not even a good one. He was too busy cursing himself for being caught admiring her to think of better.

  She’d laughed anyway. ‘Yes, I see your cheeks are already burning.’

  When you’re discovered, best to be bold, he thought. William had taken his cue.

  Now, in the upstairs room of the Star, his cheeks were burning again. This was not how he had hoped the meeting would go. He tried to mollify her.

  ‘Sweetling, you know of great men and their desires, tell me what will please Sir Henry.’

  ‘Why should I know of great men’s desires?’ Constanza demanded.

  ‘For one, you are a thing much desired,’ said William.

  ‘A jewel, perhaps?’ she asked.

  William saw the danger. ‘No, no, sweetling. Not an ornament, not a bauble. No trophy to be displayed.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Constanza.

  Her eyes were fixed on him. William felt tired. He was not equal to this struggle. He’d hoped for solace from his difficulties. He found himself wrestling with a wolf. No, not a wolf.

  ‘You’re like a hawk,’ he said, ‘prized for her sleek plumage, yes, but desired for the power and the thrill that comes from seeing her fly and fall and strike.’

  He had struck his own target. She rewarded him with a smile. Constanza settled back into her chair.

  ‘Do you know this woman that your patron woos?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t. That’s part of what plagues me. I have nothing to feed off,’ William answered.

  ‘Bare imagination is not adequate?’

  ‘So far, no.’

  ‘Take Sir Henry, then, for your inspiration,’ she suggested.

  William shook his head. ‘Worse yet. He’s no subject for a poem. Short, addled in manner and in dress. I’ve scarcely seen him but I hope him wealthy. There’s little else to draw a woman in.’

  Constanza’s fan snapped out and struck him gently on the arm.

  ‘You would be surprised what we women prize,’ she said. ‘Very well, then, not the lover but the rival.’

  ‘Greene?’

  ‘Now there’s a man,’ said Constanza.

  William thought of his friends’ warning. What was Robert Greene to Constanza or she to him? He dared not ask. She was already more dangerous to approach than a sharp-quilled porpentine. He’d only just coaxed a smile from her. Besides, her idea had merit. William longed to see Greene, who it seemed was both his and Sir Henry’s rival.

  ‘You are as clever as you are beautiful,’ he said.

  William took her hand to kiss it. She drew it from him.

  ‘Your hand has other work,’ she said. ‘The poem will not write itself.’

  It seemed she was not entirely soothed.

  ‘I am told,’ said Constanza rising from her seat, ‘that Robert Greene can oft be found at the George and Dragon in Southwark.’

  William rose too but Constanza was already at the door.

  ‘If you hurry, you may find him there while it is still light enough to see him clearly.’ She smiled and pulled the door closed behind him.

  . . . most capricious poet, honest Ovid

  An argument between lovers is not, in the ordinary way, conducive to the poet’s art. Yet, to William’s surprise, his muse had seen fit to turn up for the fight. After Constanza’s dismissal he had spent a profitless evening trying to find Robert Greene. There was no sign of him at the George and Dragon in Southwark, which was filled with sailors from all the ports of Europe. He had stamped his way home to his lodging in the dark and gone to bed in a foul mood. He had risen with images of nations at war as the guiding conceit for his sonnet turning in his mind. Yet each time he raised his hand to write a word he was prevented by thought that there was a better one.

  William distracted himself with a battered copy of Ovid from the small collection of books kept in the Theatre. Here was a poet who understood there were no perfect words or perfect images of love. William need only find one perspective. Better yet, find two and set them in reflection on each other. This frame of mind acquired, the sonnet fell upon his page full-formed.

  He took it to Sir Henry.

  William finished the recitation, put the page down and looked up at his audience. He stood in the parlour of Sir Henry’s house at the centre of a small circle of chairs. To his front, Sir Henry, dishevelled and smiling. To his righ
t, Lord Hunsdon. To his left a third man, stern and pale-faced in black garments. This third man had not smiled since William had entered.

  ‘I like it, Master Shakespeare,’ Sir Henry said.

  He plucked up the page.

  ‘I take it I am Mars, the God of War?’ he said as he scanned it.

  ‘Just so, Sir Henry,’ said William, casting his eye about his audience. He had never stood among so many great ones before. Sir Henry had not seen fit to introduce him to the other men before making him speak his poem out loud. He knew Lord Hunsdon by Oldcastle’s pointing him out at the Paris Garden. The other’s face tickled his remembrance but could not be placed.

  ‘You write a fair hand, Master Shakespeare,’ said Sir Henry. ‘You speak Latin?’

  ‘Well enough, Sir Henry, though I have not that facility I would wish with it.’

  ‘Greek?’ asked Sir Henry.

  ‘Less, Sir Henry.’

  ‘I am surprised, Master Shakespeare,’ said Sir Henry. ‘You seem to have a facility with language.’

  ‘My schoolmaster thought as you did,’ answered William. ‘I have considered the issue.’

  ‘Your conclusion?’

  ‘I love our native tongue,’ said William. ‘Whenever I try to speak in another I think only of how much more eloquently I would express myself in English. It is as though suddenly finding oneself hobbled, a single leg, where a moment before one ran like a greyhound. I dislike the feeling.’

  Sir Henry reached out and plucked a sheet of paper from the table. ‘Read this,’ he said.

  William took it from his grasp and saw it was a letter in Latin.

  ‘Out loud, if you please,’ said Sir Henry. ‘In English.’

  William paused and scanned the first line. He longed to know what this mummery was about. Perhaps Sir Henry simply sought to have his paid-for poet perform for his guests. The man’s motives were as confused as his clothing.

  William began: ‘To our beloved and most trusted Henry Carr, Knight. To your special trust . . . no, to your special care we entrust this embassy.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sir Henry.

  He reached out and took the letter from William’s hand. Placing it down he picked up the poem again and scanned it.

  ‘This should do very well. Very well, indeed. What do you think, Hunsdon?’

  Lord Hunsdon nodded, looking at William. ‘Yes, it might serve your purpose well, Henry.’

  Sir Henry took a purse from his doublet, produced coins and handed them to William.

  ‘I shall need another poem,’ Sir Henry said.

  ‘Of course,’ replied William, feeling the weight of the coins heavy in his hand.

  ‘Of my rival, though,’ Sir Henry said, ‘a little too little, I think.’

  ‘He is portrayed as Vulcan, Sir Henry,’ said William, put out, ‘crippled god, cuckolded husband of Venus, jealous, betrayed.’

  ‘Oh, clever enough, Master Shakespeare,’ said Sir Henry, ‘and yet –’

  ‘And yet, Sir Henry?’ prompted William.

  ‘Will all your audience understand the allusion? Are you perhaps being a little too clever?’

  ‘Too clever?’

  ‘Something a little more direct next time, I think, don’t you?’ said Sir Henry.

  ‘Of course,’ said William.

  Of course, for Greene the grudge-bearer, thought William, Sir Henry wants an insult more obvious, a slander more direct. Never mind Robert Greene was a man as well known for the holding of grudges as for the writing of plays. Oh well, William thought as he departed, at least I shall die a poet.

  How now? A rat?

  Alice Hunt crept down the central staircase of Sir Henry’s town house and prayed she was not discovered. She screwed her courage to the sticking place. She had to know why William had come there and why her father hid from him. The hall was empty but she did not wish to be found by any of Sir Henry’s servants. Least of all by Watkins, Sir Henry’s manservant, whose scarred face with its twisted, broken nose had frightened her from first sight of it. The man moved so quietly she did not dare believe he was not behind her at any moment. Yet she dared not stay above. Not since she had seen William.

  Alice had learned to move in silence over many years evading her mother and father. Only by such subtle movements had she held any freedom at all. She moved as close to the door of the parlour as she dared. What was William, the over-bold cause of so much pleasure and punishment, doing in their host’s house? What was her father about? The announcement of William’s arrival had been like a hawk appearing among doves. Sir Henry, her father’s master, Sir Thomas Lucy, and another guest of Sir Henry’s, Lord Hunsdon, had set to hurried conversation. At the end of which the three had gone into the parlour and her father had ducked into the alcove in the hall and pulled across the curtain.

  As soon as William had left, her father had emerged from behind the arras in the hall and gone into the parlour. She could hear his voice now, excitement warring with anger.

  ‘It is him, Sir Thomas. Out of any doubt, Sir Thomas, it is him.’

  ‘As Walsingham’s report suggested,’ came a voice she thought to be that of their host, Sir Henry Carr.

  Then the dour voice of her father’s master, Sir Thomas Lucy. ‘If that is so, Sir Henry, have a care. This William Shakespeare is of a family tainted by recusant sympathies, though of his father I have heard only good report. By my man Hunt’s witness, Shakespeare is himself of questionable morality.’

  ‘I am always careful, Sir Thomas. That is why I sought to know if you knew aught of the fellow.’

  Sir Henry’s voice again. He seemed a harmless old man, who’d pinched her cheek when she was introduced to him. Yet, she’d noted, her father was not his usual intemperate self in Sir Henry’s presence. Sir Henry’s voice had lost some of the gentleness it held when he had spoken to her.

  ‘You had reason to ask.’

  A fourth voice that she took to be Lord Hunsdon. Alice had not been introduced to him but she had heard the servants’ gossip about him, the Queen’s cousin.

  ‘How so?’ Sir Thomas asked.

  ‘There have been –’ Sir Henry paused, ‘– oddities of late. That have prompted caution.’

  Lord Hunsdon snorted. Sir Henry made no comment on his laughter but continued speaking. ‘Walsingham believes the Spanish have agents in the city.’

  ‘Or Montalto.’ Lord Hunsdon’s voice.

  ‘The Cardinal?’ asked Sir Thomas. ‘What interest has he in England?’

  Sir Henry ignored the question. ‘So you see, Sir Thomas, I am grateful for your care, your most gentle care, but all is well in hand.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Hunt. I am quite aware of that.’ Sir Thomas again. Her father must have whispered something to him. Alice’s curiosity overcame her. Looking about to reassure herself that the hall of the house was empty, she crept closer to the parlour and peered through the crack between door and frame. Her father stood behind Sir Thomas’s chair, bent to whisper in his ear. No easy pose for one so massy as her father.

  ‘My steward reminds me that this Shakespeare already stands accused of poaching,’ Sir Thomas said.

  ‘And more,’ hissed her father.

  ‘Enough, Hunt,’ Sir Thomas rebuked him.

  Alice could not see her father’s face but in the trembling of his frame she could see his anger. For a month now, since the night he had almost caught her with William, her father had kept her at his side. Watching her always. A dog that might stray if not leashed. To be with William had seemed to be finally free of the heavy hand of her father. It had been a freedom brief and passing. Replaced with a shorter chain, a smaller cage.

  ‘There must be some reckoning,’ Sir Thomas continued. ‘My steward has the right of it there. Justice must be done.’

  ‘I may need him,’ said Sir Henry. ‘You know how England is beset, Sir Thomas. That is why you and your fellow members of the House of Commons are called to London. The war in the Netherlands, the Spanish unfurling
their war banners, the Earl of Leicester’s expedition, the French.’

  ‘What do the Dutch or the French or even the Spanish have to do with your embassy to Venice?’ Sir Thomas asked.

  ‘I go to seek Venetian aid.’

  ‘Why would papist Venice help Protestant England?’

  ‘For religion Venice has little care. But for commerce? Everything,’ Sir Henry answered. ‘Venice is wounded. The Turk has harried them from their former holdings in the Mediterranean. Philip has done them harm too. The Spanish route to the Indies round the Cape has cut Venice’s monopoly on that trade. If England will promise to set our ships on the Spanish galleons that go south to the Cape then that monopoly is restored and Venice’s fortunes with it. They need do little in return save lend us money and be our ally.’

  Sir Thomas shook his head. Alice caught a look of frustration pass across Sir Henry’s face. Sir Henry shrugged and held out his arms.

  ‘It suffices that there are plans afoot in which the lad Shakespeare may play a role.’ Sir Henry looked up at Hunt’s heaving bulk. ‘If it makes your man content it is a dangerous part this Shakespeare would play, and all unknowing of it.’

  ‘So certain he’s the man for your plotting?’ Lord Hunsdon asked.

  ‘He has the qualities I sought. Clever, writes a fair hand, a player,’ said Sir Henry.

  ‘Yet not to be trusted. His family are known to favour Rome,’ interjected Sir Thomas.

  ‘He does not seem religious. And that he comes from popish stock, that may prove to my advantage,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Being thought he is of doubtful loyalty to his Protestant masters, that he is their agent becomes less apparent.’

  Sir Henry looked from Lord Hunsdon to Sir Thomas.

  ‘Gentlemen, I am not so foolish as to fix on him all untried. He will be tested.’

  Hunt bent again and hissed in his master’s ear loud enough for all to hear. ‘There must be justice, Sir Thomas. Where is England if the law yields to expediency?’

  ‘The law or revenge?’ Sir Henry asked.

  Sir Thomas waved Hunt back and turned to Sir Henry. ‘I do not wish to cause your plans to go awry, Sir Henry, but I must insist that this man be held to account. My position in the county would be undermined if it were known I had a poacher in my grasp and let him go.’