Or worse. Soon the letter might come telling Anthony that Tom was dead. Tortured to death. Executed. Where was that jackanapes Bramble? Damn his eyes! Damn his dawdling and shillyshallying. What was keeping him? A man’s life hung in the balance.
He chucks more logs on the fire blazing in the cell. He picks up the poker. He’ll brain Bramble with this when he gets in. In fury, he whacks the poker against the grate so hard and it makes such a loud noise when he does so, that it takes him a moment to register the sound of iron key in door. His stomach goes hollow. Here comes the news.
The guards admit his servant. Bramble bends a face of tragedy upon Anthony. He knows the news already. He must have heard the news off the passengers on the boat. Thomas is dead.
‘Sir… I… have sad… terrible… I -’
‘I’ll know the worst right now rather than hear you stutter me down to hell!’
‘Indeed, I bring bleak news, sir.’
‘What did I just say?’ shouts Anthony. ‘Spit it out!’
Tears tumble down Bramble’s face.
‘The Queen…’ he gasps.
‘What’s the bitch done now?’
‘Her Majesty has left us, sir.’
‘What?’
‘Queen Elizabeth is dead, Sir Anthony. James of Scots is the new King of England.’
Anthony lets out a long whoop of joy and begins dancing around his cell, crying out with an exultation that sounds like rage,
‘The Queen is dead! The Queen is dead! A curse upon her bones!’
Nat’s astonishment gives way fear. Anthony becomes ever more maniacal. Nat senses that he is capable of doing any abomination, and in that instant, Anthony’s wild gaze falls upon him, seizes his wrist and swings him towards the fireplace. Nat struggles, but this crazed Anthony is as strong as a runaway bull and Nat clatters to his knees before the fire. Then Anthony drops to his knees beside him. For want of an altar he is kneeling on the Persian rug before the New Prison cell fireplace, hands clasped together in prayer. And there they are, master and servant, side by side, praying into the rising flames.
Palms pressed together, Nat looks out of the corner of his eyes at Anthony, red and sweating. He breathes heavily, his eyes are malevolent little wicks of reflected firelight, his stench – unleashed by that little jig around the cell – is peppery. His red beard goes up and down as he prays into the fire like a pagan in the Temple of Mithras summoning Ahriman God of Darkness and his forces of death and destruction. The flames wobble with the panting fervour of his master’s prayers.
‘God bless and keep King James! Our deliverer and hope of the age. Hear me now, Lord. Let no mischief overtake him all the long way down from Scotland. Let no assassin’s shot come near him at Jedburgh, nor no suspicious pottage be set before him at York; let no plaguy-breathed petitioner sneeze on him at Hitchin, but let him come safe to the throne to do Thy Blessed Work on Earth!’
10
King James had been on the throne for less than a month before he successfully petitioned the Venetian Doge and Senate to pardon Sir Anthony, who returned to his palazzo on the Grand Canal in triumph.
It was bruited that Anthony would soon be recalled to Whitehall and made either Lord Chancellor or Secretary of State. A bindweed of gondolas tangled among the palazzo’s mooring posts as English office-seekers and petitioners vied for influence from the new king’s anointed, and merchant bankers fell over themselves to extend him lines of credit. The mooring posts themselves Nat had newly painted in the Sherley livery, blue with coiling gold bands.
One evening, an impressive and forbidding looking felze – a gondola with a roof on it - was moored to the blue and gold posts. The felze carried the crest of the Levant Company, England’s richest and most powerful corporation, alongside the City of London’s red dagger crest.
The booming sound of Levant Company Governor Sir Henry ‘Customer’ Hythe’s laughter, came from an upstairs window of the palazzo, where he and a couple of Levant Company Vice-Consuls were being royally entertained.
All night long Nat had been running up and down the stairs with Anthony banging the gong every five minutes for more tobacco, more wine, more meat, more fruit, more logs, or to fetch that map or those papers.
Around midnight the supper party was still going strong, with the Customer feeding Anthony top secret English espionage on Turkish naval strength in return for a promise to persuade King James to restore the Levant Company’s monopoly, recently suspended to punish the corporations’ nonpayment of tax.
Halfway down the stairs, Nat sat slumped against the wall, dog-tired. He was dressed for the evening in the new Sherley livery: stripy blue and gold sleeves and stockings with blue and gold garters on his knees. What looked like black knee breeches were actually shalwar rolled to the knees. A gift from Uruch in Rome, the shalwar had been among the bundle of defectors’ castoffs. Now Nat feared being cast off himself.
Ever since Anthony’s release, Nat had feared being stranded with no money in Venice. Once King James repatriated Anthony, Nat would have no way of getting home. How would he eat? Where would he sleep? Every third thought filled him with a sickly, nervous dread, a heaviness in the limbs and spine that made Nat feel as though he was carrying a heavy box or crate on even those rare occasions when he wasn’t weighed down with Anthony’s burdens. This fear of being cast adrift without a penny tied a knot in his stomach that wound itself tighter and tighter every day.
He was under no illusions that Anthony might take him back to London with him. Not after Anthony dismissed twenty or so of his followers with a flick of the wrist when he was sent to prison. That was brutal. No back pay, no retainer, no sense of noblesse oblige towards men who had been halfway round the world with him. He had simply discharged his whole party, everyone except Nat himself and Elkin. Gone! Just gone!
Sitting on the servant staircase, Nat listened to the convivial hubbub up above and felt the knot in his stomach grow tighter. What if, this very night, Customer Hythe were to invite Anthony to sail back to the Pool of London with him on board one of the Levant Company’s ships, the Consent, the Great Suzanne or the Mayflower? Anthony would shake Nat from his boot heels like dust. Then where would he be? He’d be where the rest of the Sherley party’s lower servants had ended up, every man jack of them. He’d be in the galleys, sweet Jesus. And that was how his life would end. Sickness and disease felled oarsmen quicker than they could be resupplied. You smelt a galley ship before you saw it. Even from far out beyond the harbour bar the stench reached the quayside, so strong was the smell of human excrement. It was the Aldgate ditch put out to sea with colours and a mast. The galley men shat where they sat on the rowing bench. They stood up and sat down on every stroke, and with each day of the voyage – as the grim joke went - had less far to travel. Nat pulled a face like Darius passing a three-legged dog.
How had such an abomination as a galley ship appeared in the world, he wondered. What could have spawned this man-devouring Sea-Monster? He heard Darius, when he was leaning against his mule in the Zagros foothills, say,
‘It takes a lot of work by a few dedicated men to make an unjust world.’
That was the truth of it. A few sharers’ profit had spawned the ocean-going Sea-Monsters. The sickness and disease of the rowing bench was the health of the moneyed incorporation.
The gong dinged the dented sound it made when Anthony booted it instead of striking it with the hammer.
‘Bramble! Up here now, jackanapes! Bring up that Muscadelle, Bramble! To speak truth, Customer, the New Prison was a most excellent wine-cellar!’
Nat hauled himself to his feet.
‘The Prophet Muhammed,’ Darius once told him, ‘would rather a man did one hour of deep reflection, than sixty years of worship.’ But, oh Darius, where was a serving man to find a whole hour?
Nat carried the bottles upstairs and was ordered to bank the fire. As he knelt with the fire tongs, Nat bent an ear to the conversation. He soon heard news that thrilled him to th
e marrow, set his blood on fire, and gave him hope that his fate might not be death in the galley ships after all.
Customer Hythe was telling Anthony about the recent arrival of a Persian envoy.
‘… Of course Venice doesn’t want to upset the Turk,’ the Customer was saying, ‘and so he’s not at the Palazzo Ducale, but they’ve lodged him out of sight at the Palazzo del Camello - the Camel Palace! Ha! - way over in Canareggio.’
‘What’s this Persian’s name?’ asked Anthony.
‘I’ve got it here somewhere,’ said Vice-Consul Roe ruffling through some papers. ‘Yes. Here it is. Uruch Bey.’
‘Ah, he was First Secretary to my Embassy, and - one moment. Hie! Why so many logs on the fire, Bramble? Pull some out or you’ll burn my palazzo down! Now, where were we, gentlemen? Uruch Bey. That’s right. Yes, I may pay this Persian envoy a little visit tomorrow.’
‘Well, I’m afraid,’ joshed the Customer, ‘that this envoy only comes with a diplomatic portmanteau, and not three-hundredweight of silk!’
Silence. In a voice that chilled the room, Anthony enquired,
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Nothing. A jest. A poor jape. Forgive me, only I’m just so anxious about the suspension of our monopoly and these back-taxes the king has slapped on us. We all are.’
‘Leave it to me,’ said Anthony, an expansive wave of his arm knocking a map of the world from the table to the floor. Upon landing, the map curled itself up tight, as if fearing further assaults by Anthony or the Levant Company. Nat retrieved the map from the floor and gave it back to Anthony.
It was nearly dawn when Nat handed the Levant Company delegation their hats and cloaks. He lit their way down the steps with a flaming brand, leading them out onto the jetty, where they stepped into their waiting felze.
All’s Nat tiredness fell away. He ran upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. Perhaps he would find Anthony already at work, writing some treasonous stuff. Any kind of treason would do just so long as he wrote a letter for Nat to sell to Uruch. When he reached the landing, however, he was dismayed to find him on his way to his bedchamber.
‘Sir Anthony!’
‘Goodnight, Bramble,’ he slurred.
‘Forgive my boldness, Sir Anthony, but the Spanish ambassador sails on the noontide tomorrow and I fear, begging your pardon, that you may sleep past noon. Therefore, now’s your one chance to write a letter to the King of Spain, should you wish so to do, for any reason, and have your servant deliver the letter at first light without disturbing your much deserved rest, so please you.’
This was the longest he had ever spoken to Anthony in one go. When he was done, Anthony just stared and stared. Nat looked down at the floorboards. When he looked up, the stone-blue pop eyes were still boring into him.
‘Ink,’ said Anthony, at last. ‘And the veal.’
Nat opened a drawer and took a few sheets from the ream of pure white vellum which Anthony liked to call ‘the veal.’ Nat stirred the ink, dipped his master’s pen and began heating wax in a candle flame.
Anthony took up the pen and scratched away, now and then pausing to refer to the spy’s report on the Turkish navy, and all the time humming to himself. He signed the letter with a flourish which spattered black ink spots over the vellum and his white sleeve.
‘Wax, Bramble.’
Nat dripped hot sealing wax on the letter fold. Anthony stamped the face of Shah Abbas in the scarlet wax, propped the sealed letter against the back of the desk, and rose from his chair.
‘God give you good night, Sir Anthony.’
Anthony padded out of the room and up the stairs.
Nat forced himself to count to seven. Then he stepped to the desk and sliced open the freshly sealed letter.
Your Illustrious Highness and Christian Majesty, Philip, King of Spain and all the Portugals,
Upon English State Secretary Lord Sir Robert Cecil’s request to the Levant Company for intelligence about Ottoman military strength, serious matter has been discovered which urgently touches your territories.
The Sultan’s navy is massing sixty warships at Constantinople. On the second day of this month, ten thousand men, of whom five thousand are combatants, went aboard….
He stops reading. This is it. The right thing at the right time. Here’s something that Uruch Bey will pay for in gold. He will take him Anthony’s signed original. To escape detection, all he has to do first is substitute a copy of the letter to take to the Spanish ambassador. This needs no forger’s art. Servants do the actual penning of most gentlemen’s letters. Half the time Nat scrivens Anthony’s letters anyway. The Spanish ambassador will think nothing of reading a letter in his handwriting, instead of his master’s.
He opens the drawer, and takes out a fresh fillet of veal, which seems to glow in the breaking dawn. He squares the sheet of vellum on the desk. Using Anthony’s letter knife, he slits a few stitches in his doublet’s lining, from which he thumbs out the seal ring of Shah Abbas that Uruch gave him. He stirs the ink. Pen nib squeaks on vellum as he copies.
Your Illustrious Highness and Christian Majesty, Philip, King of Spain and all the Portugals.
A creak on the landing. Footsteps. Nat holds his breath. He listens. Anthony fills his piss pot. Footsteps. He hears Anthony shuffling about his chamber. Go to bed. Go to bed.
No time to copy out the whole long letter. Besides Uruch may give him enough to get home, which means covering his tracks is academic. Instead of the whole long intelligence report about the naval dockyards, therefore, he draws a stick man with a crown on his head, and dashes off the following dedication:
I, Anthony Sherley dedicate this portrait what I have just done to Your Catholic Majesty in hopes that you will make me an admiral. I like boats and have my own sailor suit, I know several nautical terms such as, ‘Lay her a-hold’ and ‘Take down the topsail.’ I promise not to lose every single ship in my command like my idiot brother Thomas, the least successful pirate in the world.
The wax is still warm. Nat folds the vellum, and presses his Shah Abbas seal ring into the wax. Boot heels approach the door. Nat’s heart bumps against his ribs. He props the forgery at the back of the desk, and pockets the original. The door opens. Nat jumps up from the desk.
‘Tired as I was,’ says Anthony, belting his sword over his nightshift, ‘I lay awake. Couldn’t sleep, you see, for the question going round my skull. Why does my servant want me to write a letter to the King of Spain? Why? Answer being: he’s going to steal my letter to the King Philip and sell it to Uruch Bey at the Camel Palace.’
‘But here’s the letter, sir, seal unbroken.’
Anthony inspects the seal. The wax seal – applied when only lukewarm - breaks. The letter springs open. Nat backs towards the window. Anthony looks from stick man to Nat’s hand.
‘What’s that ring on your finger?’
Nat climbs out of the second-floor window onto the steeply sloping zinc porch in the breaking dawn. He springs from the porch and, with his eerie sense of balance, lands on a mooring post. He hears Anthony roar for Elkin. He leaps from one post to another, aiming for the jetty. Anthony and Elkin get there first. Now he is stuck at the top of a post. They jab their swords towards him. He hops from one mooring post to another until he is out in the middle of the river.
‘Swim for it and the letter’s destroyed,’ mocks Anthony.
Elkin pulls his dagger from his belt, takes aim and throws. Nat hears the blade thud into the wooden mooring post only inches below his foot. Then he hears the dip of an oar. He looks up. A felze comes swooshing by. Nat hops onto its roof, leaps from the roof of the boat onto the far bank of the Rio San Maurizio, with the gondolier cursing him in Veneto, and Anthony, across the water, jumping into his blue and gold gondola and shouting,
‘The Camel Palace, Elkin!’
11
Nat ran through Canareggio’s cold dawn alleys under lines of dripping laundry. Rust flaked from the studs in the door of the dowdy Camel P
alace as he banged with his fist. There was no sound from the house. From the look of its peeling paintwork and the purple loosestrife sprouting from cracks in the wall, the whole palazzo might have been abandoned. He bent double to get his breath back from the running. He was wheezing so hard that he didn’t hear the door open. He looked up to find a man with a poignard beard in the Spanish style staring at him. It took him a moment to recognise Uruch Bey.
Nat held up the letter with its broken seal. He warned the First Secretary that Anthony had caught him in the theft and was on his way here. Uruch fetched his cloak and turban and they plunged into the byways of Canareggio, where they would be safe from Anthony and Elkin, who didn’t know this part of the city.
Hands behind his back, Uruch led Nat through a dank alley, where roosting pigeons gurgled in the broken eaves.
The sight of Antonio’s servant made him sad. Nat – wasn’t that the name? - looked as haggard as a youth could be. His hair stuck up in neglected clumps and spikes. Saddest detail of all somehow was the contrast between the blue and yellow satin garters and the rest of his clothes, which were the by-now seamy castoffs that Uruch had given him in Rome. The shiny blue and yellow satin resembled the gaudy ribbon on a mangy monkey dancing beside a poor busker. And just as the monkey has no sense of the indignity of its gold-braided jacket with the jingling bells, so Nat seemed oblivious to the humiliating blue and yellow livery.
They emerged onto the Rio Della Sensa, its waters a frothy rind of cabbage heads, pig trotters and flotsam, and turned onto the New Pavement Canal, where Uruch stopped before a statue of a merchant wearing a broad, flat turban. This was Alfani, he explained, the merchant who did for Venice what Darius was doing for Tabriz: he brought them their first oil.
Nat’s heart soared to hear Darius’s name mentioned again, but how to describe the bitter, crushing dismay he felt moments later on learning that Uruch had not one shred of news about him, nothing beyond the fact that sales were up. That was it. That was all Uruch knew, or cared to know about Darius Nouredini. Nat cursed the First Secretary under his breath.
The Trade Secret Page 20
