The Trade Secret

by Robert Newman

  Mani hears the musket stocks rest on the ground.

  ‘Will you sacrifice your life for a couple of doves?’ the Magyar asks him. ‘It’s very early in the morning to die. So why not hand them over and then you can go. We’re just scouts, like you. We’re no firing squad. Our orders simply say to gather intelligence. So why not give us the doves and then we can all sit outside and finish the last of that wine, eh?’

  The Magyar holds out his hand.

  The blue dove hits him in the face. Mani spins on his heel and lobs the black and white dove out of the deep-set window.

  The Magyar shoots him where he stands. The shot’s reverberations give way to the sound of flapping wings. All three janissaries slash at the blue dove flapping around the stone lodge. One blade connects. Abruptly, a plum-coloured spray sprinkles them, but the sky-blue bird keeps flying round and round the stone lodge, misting the dusty air with its blood. It drops and rolls into a clump of bloody feathers in the corner.

  The Magyar cuts satchel from dove, and spreads it out on the broad slab of a window ledge. He turns to his comrades,

  ‘This nest of spies has got our battle plan!’

  A groan from the floor. The Magyar scoops up the limp sky-blue bird, and crouches beside him.

  ‘You see, you dumb poppy demon! We got the bird anyway. Here’s the bird, fool! Look!’

  Trackmarks cannot turn his head, so the Magyar holds the dead blue bird over him, its blood dripping onto his face.

  Mani’s eyes locate the blue dove. To the Magyar’s shock, a broad smile lifts the ends of the Persian spy’s horseshoe moustache. Mani looks the Magyar in the eye. He works his mouth to be able to speak, then rasps his last words:

  ‘You got the wrong bird.’

  The Magyar shakes him, shouting,

  ‘What secret is greater than a battle plan? Do you have a spy in high command? A general? Tell me! We have doctors. We can save you. What’s the secret? Tell me your great secret!’

  He stands up and tells the Egyptians to go though his pockets. Empty. All empty. He kicks the dead body.

  7

  A golden hawk, Shah Abbas’s finest, hovers high in the air. His wings span the whole plain west of Isfahan, south of the Zagros Mountains. The Shah’s hunting party are specks now. Dots. The barking dogs cannot be heard so high. Hunting dogs don’t leave a hawk long with his prey.

  The golden hawk tilts his wings. The bells on his legs tinkle in the current as he changes direction and soars away from the hunting party. Let the beaters with their petty lures and gyres beckon the falcons, the tercels and the clumsy young eagles. The royal hawk is above and beyond them all. Any prey now caught belongs to him alone. Dogs will not be able to snatch his kill away to give to men.

  He hangs in a clear sky. Halfway between himself and the ground, the golden hawk sees a black and white dove. Black and white and directly below like mouse tracks in snow. The black and white dove is hindered in his flight. Some impediment in the flap of the wings. A patch of pink or purple on its back. A wound!

  The golden hawk folds his wings and stoops. Dropping like a stone, he snatches the dove on his way down. On the ground, his talons hold the fallen dove as his beak shreds the black and white feathers. The pink patch the colour of a raw wound is not a raw wound. It cannot be eaten. The hawk rips silk to shreds, then tears at feathers with his beak. Plum-coloured blood oozes out onto the black and white. Now he is getting somewhere. Now here is flesh. The dark meat is the same colour as always. The taste is the same taste as always. All is as it should be.

  By the time the yapping, barking, howling dogs arrive, the men on horses following after, the hawk has eaten his fill, and is content to flap to Shah Abbas’s royal gauntlet. The hunting dogs may have his leavings.

  Torn feathers and tattered fragments of shredded pink silk covered in black writing blow this way and that, scattered on the breeze, lost forever.

  8

  After the Vatican awarded him fourteen hundred gold escudi, Anthony set out from Rome a well-contented traveller. But travel broadens the mind, the road lends perspective. He had not been very many miles upon the Appian Way before he began to consider whether he had not been rash and over-hasty in accepting this award of fourteen hundred escudi. Sure, it sounded a fine sum, but when weighed in the scale against all the hardships of a journey between Rome and Isfahan, he found it wanting. So he had gone to Venice instead and taken out a year’s lease on a sumptuous palazzo on the Grand Canal. He was so flush that he paid the lease in advance, but soon had cause to regret acting out of character in this way.

  He’d only been in the palazzo a fortnight when he was found guilty of extortion against a Persian merchant, and sentenced to three months in the New Prison with immediate banishment to follow his release. A whole year’s rent he’d paid! It was all Queen Elizabeth’s fault. The long arm of the Queen had robbed him of funds. Spooked by the damage he could do to England’s relations with Venice and the Mediterranean trade, she’d forbidden all English bankers to extend him credit. What else could he do, what other course was left him but to try and lay hold of the Persian merchant’s silk bales?

  On being sent to New Prison, Anthony dismissed all his followers save two, Elkin and Bramble. He kept Elkin next to him in jail for protection. Elkin wasn’t complaining. Stranded and penniless the rest of the lower servants were pulling an oar in the stinking galley ships. Jail was far better, especially an apartment cell like Anthony’s with fruit, good meat and a fire. Bramble, meanwhile, came and went, running errands and delivering mail. Anthony lodged Bramble at the palazzo as a sort of nightwatchman, chiefly to make sure that the owner, on hearing of Anthony’s incarceration, didn’t try to let the Grand Canal property to anyone else - it was the principle of the thing. He had paid a year’s rent in advance, and so it stuck in his craw to think of anyone else having the run of what was his.

  One morning in the cell, Nat stood beside the oak desk he had just shifted from palazzo to prison listening to Anthony’s rings clack through hot wax, sealing the letter he’d just written to the King of Spain.

  Anthony wore two rings side by side. One for Essex who sent him east and one for the Shah who sent him west. The mourning ring for Essex, a white skull with eyes of jet on a band of gold, was of a piece with Anthony’s whirligig sword hilt that went up and down and all around, like the trail of a bee set in steel. His master disdained to own anything unless the artisan went blind in the manufacture and so couldn’t make a copy! The signet ring, however, was identical to his own, and one day Nat would make a copy of one of Anthony’s letters and sell it to his enemies. So far the opportunity to do so had not presented itself. He would know the moment when it came.

  ‘Deliver this to the King of Spain’s ambassador, Bramble.’

  ‘At once, Sir Anthony.’

  Instead of going to Spanish ambassador’s residence, Nat went straight back to Anthony’s abandoned palazzo on the Grand Canal by Rio San Maurizio. What joy to have the whole pile to himself! Even though there was no-one but himself to fetch the food, it was still fun to bang the gong and shout a loud summons down to the empty scullery. More wine, I say! More cheese! He couldn’t help but feel like a conquering general bathing in the bath of the conquered king!

  Except not conquered yet…

  Nat sat at an ornate writing desk. With his pocket knife he carefully slit the sealing wax and read the letter that Anthony had just written to King Philip of Spain’s Ambassador.

  If His Majesty King Philip assembles a Spanish invasion fleet of but twenty-five to thirty ships at the mouth of the River Scheldt in his Dutch Dominion of the Low Countries, he shall find England can in no way defend herself. The best places for an invasion force to land are Sandwich, Harwich, Ipswich, Hull, Hartlepool. Twelve hundred to fifteen hundred men will do it, but you must take London.

  England relies upon the Turkish navy as a counterweight to Your Majesty’s ships out of the Mediterranean, but, acting under my orders, the Persian w
ill soon overrun Ottoman ports, and Your Majesty will be lord of half the world.

  The treason was eye watering. This was the strongest meat yet, more treacherous even than last week’s letter to the King of Scotland telling James how the best way to get the English crown was to ferment the Irish war because this would so impoverish the English that they would cry out for deliverance from the Queen, and the City of London merchants would welcome him as liberator.

  Only where was the market for the traitor’s letters to the King of Spain? Who could he sell this letter to? Or the one to the King of Scots? He knew no-one in Venice he could sell these to. If only Uruch was in Venice. Uruch would pay Nat gold for this letter, gold enough perhaps to buy a passage on a ship back to England, but he doubted he’d ever see Uruch again. The Great Persian Embassy was last heard of in Lisbon, as Nat knew from Anthony’s letters. All of which left Nat like the card player who, for want of a stake, folds his winning hand, folds his two kings.

  He thumbed the Shah Abbas signet ring that Uruch had given him from the honeycomb lining of his patched black and red doublet. Out slid the cod’s roe. He cracked a shard off a scarlet block of wax and held it on his knife over a candle flame. He drizzled the sealing wax over the cracked boss, and stamped the ring down hard to reseal the letter. As if he knew the liberties Nat was taking with his image, Shah Abbas’s livid and scarlet face stared up at him from the fresh wax.

  Nat turned to the invisible guests crowding the salon, and bid them adieu. He kissed his fingertips at the ladies, then bowed to the lords, and set out to deliver Anthony’s letter to the Spanish ambassador.

  9

  In the New Prison annex under the Doge’s Palace, Anthony was reading a letter from his sister Cessalye about their brother Thomas’s sufferings in his Turkish gaol. Anthony pored over this last letter from his sister, hoping runes could be read in it, the runes of Tom’s fate, be it life or death. Let it be life. Dear God, please let poor Tom live.

  My most honourable dear brother,

  Lord, lord, by what strange fate are all my three brothers now prisoners! Thomas in the Seven Towers, you in Venice, and Robert a hostage in Isfahan, where he is much alarmed because Shah Abbas now throws cold looks upon him for want of any word from you.

  Sultan Mehmed reprieved Thomas from execution and was about to set him free but died the night before he was to sign his pardon into law! I do not know how Thomas survives this setback, for I confess that I scarce survived the news! All hopes now lie in the gift of the new Sultan, Ahmed, who is I hear a boy of fourteen or fifteen. God help us!

  It goes hard with Thomas in the Seven Towers ever since the Turk discovered he was brother to the famous Sir Anthony Sherley, sole instigator of the Persian invasion of the Sultan’s country.

  Thomas has neither clothes, bed, fire nor blanket. His new dungeon is quite the worst he has yet endured. He is shackled to a damp wall, and there’s frost on the stone floor. But on his first night in the new cell, when his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he found he was not alone. There was another prisoner there, an English convict who told him:

  ‘Do not worry about the damp, sir. Be of good cheer. The cool air of this dungeon is rich in healthy minerals and can preserve a man’s health and life for many a year.’ Alas, the poor, good fellow died in the night.

  Thomas fears he himself can’t hold out much longer, being so much weakened by many strange sicknesses, and having endured many grievous tortures right up to the mock executions he now suffers when the guards are drunk or bored.

  One bright star glows in all this black night! James, King of Scots, sends Thomas money and still pleads with the Queen to intercede on our brother’s behalf, though she obstinately refuses to petition the Sultan to let Thomas go, it being an article of faith with her that the Great Turk is England’s counterweight against Spanish might - so forget about justice and right!

  Let us pray that Sultan Ahmed frees poor Thomas,

  God bless and keep King James, our deliverer!

  Your loving sis, Cess.

  Anthony stared into the fire. A cell is not a place where a man can endure bad news. Away down the corridor another prisoner was howling and wailing. He feared that he would soon be howling himself. He had a gut-twisting presentiment that today was the day when he would receive the letter saying sweet Tom was dead. He had sent Bramble to collect mail from the packet ship just put in at the Levant Company’s dock on the Riva degli Schiavone.

  Poor Tom, ill luck had followed him all over the world, right to the hell of Kea Island. Ah, he should have listened to Anthony and never gone to sea. Hadn’t Anthony warned him against it? On their very last conversation together, he’d warned his big brother of the pitfalls of storming an island.

  ‘I took Jamaica once, Tom, and precious good it did me! The Jamaicans fled, taking all their worldly goods with them. I got nothing out of the invasion but a ton and a half of meat. Cock a’ bones if that wasn’t all I got for taking Jamaica! By Christ’s blood, I’d have been richer taking Smithfield meat market!’

  Thomas had always been outshone by his younger brothers’ achievements. That was the problem. There was Anthony, a Colonel with Essex in France where he had been knighted by Henri IV, and now the favourite of the Shah of Persia. Aye, and there was Robert, four years in the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, whence he was sent as emissary to North Africa, now instructing Persian generals in artillery. At thirty-six years old Thomas had yet to do some great thing. It looked like he’d found his path to glory when he got into the court of James, King of Scotland.

  One misty day, Thomas and Old Sir Thomas Sherley, his father, who was then England’s Treasurer for War, rode out to meet two Scottish ambassadors at a remote spot in the Sussex Weald, near the Sherleys’ Wiston seat. These clandestine meetings were never in the same place twice, but the topic for discussion was always the same: how to obtain the funds that James, King of Scotland, needed to raise an army. On this particular day, the Earl of Mar turned in the saddle and addressed a question to Young Sir Thomas:

  ‘So, if not the West Indies, then where is the honey pot, eh? Where’s the world’s great gold mine, do you think?’

  ‘The Mediterranean Sea is where, my Lord. A lake of prizes. The only problem is rules and regulations. The only problem is the Queen. She has slapped a moratorium on hunting for prizes in the Mediterranean. She’s not just a signatory, but she herself actually framed and drafted the treaty banning piracy and privateering in the Mediterranean, so dear does she and all her faction hold the Levant trade, and so high does she rate her rank alliance with the infidel Turk.’

  ‘King James has signed no such treaty,’ said the Earl of Mar. ‘Nor will he ever.’

  ‘I offer to hazard my life and estate,’ said Thomas, ‘to attempt to take from the Turk his treasure and lay it at King James’s feet!’

  Old Sir Thomas Sherley diverted from the Queen’s war chest all the funds needed to equip his eldest son with five-hundred men and three ships, each one bearing a fine English name: Saint George, Virgin and Golden Dragon, and which all flew the Grand Duke of Tuscany’s red fleur-de-lys banner (the Duke himself a shareholder in the venture) as they sailed across the Mediterranean.

  The three ships had stalked the Straits of Gibraltar without joy for so long that the victuals ran out. They had attacked the next ship they saw, a hulking great Venetian merchantman. For eight hours straight the combined crews of Sir Thomas’s three ships battled against the Venetian galley soldiers. One hundred of his men were killed, with many more wounded, maimed and mutilated, before they at last took the Venetian ship, and found its hold full of gravel for building roads.

  That night on board the Saint George, disaffected officers, crew and walking wounded came together for a meeting.

  ‘Tom Sherley never even parlayed beforehand,’ said the outraged pilot. ‘Had he done so, then he’d have known there’d be no prize worth the life of so many men.’

  One and all, they voted to leave Si
r Thomas Sherley’s fleet, and that night the Saint George sailed away.

  With his two remaining ships, Dragon and Virgin, Thomas Sherley put in for resupply at Livorno, the Tuscan port which the English called Leghorn. The Virgin’s crew absconded when they went ashore, and so Sir Thomas had to hire survivors of a recent shipwreck, making the captain of the shipwreck, one Peacock, pilot of the Virgin. On behalf of the Virgin’s new crew, Mr Peacock thanked Sir Thomas for giving some forty-five Greek, Italian, Irish and English harbour bums a rare and unexpected opportunity, and then set sail in the Virgin, never to be seen again. That left Sir Thomas with only the Dragon, and one hundred men.

  It so happened that two Levant Company Vice-Consuls, Sir Nicholas Roe and Sir Nicholas Colthurst, had just arrived in Leghorn from the Republic of Venice, and got wind that Sir Thomas was planning to attack the Ottoman island of Kea. Any such attack on a Turkish possession by an English ship could result in the Sultan revoking the Levant Company’s harbour rights and licence to trade in the Mediterranean. Roe and Colthurst therefore instructed the Dragon’s crew in their legal and moral duty to jump ship or mutiny, or else run the risk of being hung for wrecking the Turkish and Levantine trades in which English merchants and the Crown had invested so many years of hard work. But Sir Thomas, accompanied by the Duke of Florence’s envoys, had returned with meat, beer and pay. A fresh wind filled out the topgallant and the crew stayed aboard in hope that Sir Thomas’s luck might change.

  It did not. Thomas achieved fame as The Least Successful Pirate In The World. Captured by the very islanders he was supposed to have been pillaging and marauding, and now being tortured by the Turk for a ransom he was too poor to pay.