They arrived at a hole in the wall café with a few barrel kegs outside for seats. Uruch sat down and gave Nat a zecchino and sent him in to fetch tea.
Once inside the dark cafe, Nat sniffed the air.
Qaveh!
At this early hour there were only two others there, one Arab, one Ethiopian, both of whom an ecstatic Nat startled with a greeting which was much too hearty for that time of the morning. In Nat’s mind he was among brothers of a secret caffeine sect. He returned with Uruch’s tea and a steaming cup of black qaveh for himself.
Garrulous from the first swig, he told Uruch – who, like Darius, couldn’t stomach ‘the Turk’s bitter beans’ - about how coffee was unknown in England, how Darius’s grandmother had introduced him to it, and how Darius had claimed that it was discovered by Ethiopian herders who noticed their goats cavorting about after they’d been eating the coffee bush.
Uruch interrupted this babble to say,
‘The Ambassador instructed me to find out the whole story about Darius and Gol when next I saw you.’
‘Why?’ asked Nat. ‘What’s it to him?’
‘He knows Gol’s father.’
‘Atash Zarafshani?’
‘You would not believe the Ambassador’s interest when I told him the story you told me about how Gol Zarafshani got engaged to Darius but then found out that he was already betrothed to another woman.’
‘No, no, no,’ cried Nat. ‘That’s not what I said at all! That’s not the truth of it! You have a head full of bees!’
Uruch stared him out of countenance. Nat lowered his head and mumbled,
‘Forgive me, First Secretary.’
Nat put Anthony’s letter to King Philip of Spain on the table.
‘Read it out, please,’ said Uruch.
When Nat had read out the whole letter, Uruch said nothing. The First Secretary picked it up and walked to the edge of the canal. He stood there completely immobile for so long that a heron landed on a mooring post not six feet away. Nat watched Uruch’s fingers revolve the letter, while his wrist twitched. It looked as if he were itching to send the missive spinning into the canal.
The long silence unnerved Nat. The knot in his stomach wound itself still tighter. He remembered the rumours in Rome that Uruch would defect to Spain. He already looked half-Spanish, truth be told, with that chin beard and wearing his sleeveless doublet over his satin kurta. Nat feared that he had brought the letter to the very last man he should have done. Uruch’s desire for Spanish preferment was greater than his detestation of Anthony. Of course, Uruch would give the letter to King Philip’s ambassador as a way of proving his value to the Spaniards. He would say to the Spanish,
‘Look how I stopped this falling into Venetian hands. Tell Antonio to be more careful in future – oh, and by the way there’s his English servant to be wrapped in a carpet and chains and be dropped in the lagoon off Pellestrina.’
With a sickly feeling in his bones, Nat grasped the enormity of his blunder: he had brought intelligence proving a member of the Persian Embassy to be a traitor in the pay of Spain to a member of the Persian Embassy who was himself a traitor in the pay of Spain. Upon such blunders servants are executed. Why hadn’t he seen this before?
A grey heron flapping off the mooring post was the first Nat was aware that Uruch was dancing. He looked up to find the First Secretary twirling round and round in a little dervish dance and cackling to himself.
‘Nat-jan,’ said Uruch, dancing round and round, ‘you have ended Antonio’s career. This letter shows him passing naval secrets of Venice’s vital strategic ally to her chief enemy. Should Spain even wrest control of the Mediterranean from the Turk, Venice would become a fishing village. It would be the end of the Republic! Quick! We must bring this letter to the Collegio.’
‘You go. What do you need me for?’
‘You must accompany me to the Doge’s Palace to vouch for how this letter came into my possession.’
‘God’s hooks! You’re going tell them I stole it! They’ll arrest me. They’ll throw me into the New Prison!’
Uruch walked slowly towards Nat and stopped right in front of him.
‘You stand as a marriage witness vouchsafing the honour for Darius Nouredini at his wedding, should that day ever come, to the only daughter of Atash Zarafshani, who is Hoseyn Mirza’s dear friend. The witness must be a man whose word is proven. There is only one place where you can vouch for Darius: the Doge’s Palace. That is where you prove your word.’
Nat heard boot heels clattering about on an altana, one of those precarious-looking wooden platforms on Venetian roofs, and wished for one fixed and certain thing in his wobbly ledge of a life. Then again, his one great talent was balance, the ability to keep his footing on sinking cable ferries, or the greased pole in the Datchworth fete, or when hopping between mooring posts this morning. But why did his life always pitch him up on these precipices? Why did the ground always open up beneath him?
Into his mind flashed the time when he was hewing the stone glyphs at the Temple of Mithras and half the hillside fell away to leave him perched upon a precipice. It was exactly the same here in this hole on the wall café in Venice. One minute he was sitting drinking qaveh with Uruch, and the next he was supposed to present himself as a letter-thief before the highest court in the land! He didn’t trust Don Uruch at all – but only Don Uruch had the power to get the ambassador to write a letter that would mend Darius’s broken heart.
12
In the white marble Anticollegio, the small anteroom to the senatorial Collegio, Nat could hear the indistinct Veneto hum of the Senate arraigning his old master. The longer Nat waited the more scared he became. One then two then three hours he had waited in this sepulchre. If the Senate were going to find Anthony guilty, wouldn’t they have done so by now?
This delay could only mean one thing. They were going to let him go! The Senate couldn’t touch King James’ favourite. Pardoned for spying, Anthony would know he could stab a false servant through the heart with impunity. What if Anthony came out this way? He would kill him on the spot. Nat would find that fussy sword hilt, the one he’d always hated cleaning, sticking out of his guts. He had walked into his last room. He couldn’t leave because the Doge’s private guards, the scudieri, stood at the doors. He was trapped in this white mausoleum. This was his tomb. He was the graveyard caretaker accidentally entombed while sweeping a family vault.
The Senate was rising. It had come to a decision. Nat was so frightened he couldn’t focus his eyes. The door opened. A bustle of footsteps were coming his way. They were going to file right past him!
In walked the two most powerful men in Venice. Doge Marino Grimani, the corno ducale on his head like a great white whelk, followed by Senator Giacomo Foscarini, a bear of a man with cropped brown hair and a full brown beard. Nat looked right past them. He craned his neck this way and that, trying to see Anthony before Anthony saw him. He might only have a split second. Out came Customer Hythe and sundry Levant Company officials. Where was Anthony?
There he was flanked by scudieri, but they weren’t restraining him. They’d taken his sword away, but he often had petty knives concealed about his person. Nat drew back against the white marble wall, hoping his master wouldn’t see him in the few seconds it would take him to cross so small a room. Then Uruch came bounding in, eyes shining, and rapturously announced,
‘Banished! Nat-jan! He’s banished!’
Anthony swung round. His bug eyes started from his skull to see his betrayers side by side. He took a pace toward the two confederates.
‘As for your part in this, First Secretary,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell Shah Abbas to slay your whole family and your village!’
‘Do you honestly imagine your word carries any weight whatsoever in Isfahan?’ replied Uruch.
‘You gave the Shah’s ring to my servant.’
Nat lifted his hand,
‘Here’s the ring, Sherley.’
‘Ha ha, bravely done, lad
,’ laughed Anthony. ‘You’re a spunky lad.’ He seized Nat’s wrist, and, from a sheath in the small of his back, whipped out a blade shaped like the ace of spades.
Nat rabbit-punched Anthony’s face with the Shah’s ring. The knife clattered on the marble floor. Anthony staggered back, blood flowing from the wound below his eye.
The scudieri separated the two Englishmen. Nat shook from head to toe, but no longer from fear. He was a shaking mill-house. An oil gusher. Whatever cap rock had been damming up all his power all his life - Anthony, famine, England, fear - was blown sky high by this rebellion. This anteroom was no sepulchre but the threshold to a world in which all was possible. The rules had changed.
Three scudieri lifted his old master bodily into the air, and carried him feet-first out of the room. Eyes bulging, face bloody, Anthony clung to the doorway’s marble architrave, like a man hanging by his fingertips against the cyclone that was hurling him out the door.
‘There’s nowhere you can go in the whole wide world, Bramble, where I cannot stretch out my arm and smite you! My brother Thomas will be waiting for you in London!’
‘I’ll end the pirate’s career just like I have ended yours, Don Antonio!’
Taking a running jump, Nat stamped Anthony’s fingers off the marble doorway, and the scudieri whisked him away.
‘Thomas will kill you, by Christ!’ shouted Anthony along the corridor and down the stairs. ‘He’ll kill you! He’ll eat out your heart!’
Nat heard angry words behind his back, and turned to see Foscarini jabbing the Customer’s chest with his forefinger,
‘And as for you,’ growled Foscarini, ‘if the Turk discovers you are giving intelligence to his enemy-in-arms he will close down the sea! Capice? The Sultan has only to contract his fist to shut down the entire Mediterranean! Then there will be no bread in Venice, and not a ship on the Thames either.’
An outraged Customer swelled his chest, and said,
‘Senator Foscarini, I demand an apology.’
‘Last warning!’ growled the crop-headed brown bear, and cuffed the Customer round the head a couple of good loud blows, then commanded the scudieri in Veneto dialect: ‘Portelo fora prima che lo copa mi, cole mie mano! Portelo fora prima che lo copa mi!’ Get him out of here before I kill him with my own hands.
After the scudieri escorted the Levant Company’s three representatives off the premises, Foscarini thanked the First Secretary Uruch Bey and his accomplice.
‘My thanks to you both. You have saved the Republic.’
Uruch and Nat bowed low.
‘Will Cavaliere Antonio,’ asked Uruch, ‘return to the new king who loves him?’
‘We’ll warn King James not to incur our grave displeasure by allowing his repatriation. No, Antonio will be sailing with you, Uruch Bey, upon the Santiago Matamoros, the St John, Killer of the Moors. He will not be returning to England unlike this brave ragazzo.’
‘Nat Bramble at your service. Your honour, I fear I will be an old man before I see London again. For Sir Anthony has stranded me penniless and far from home.’
‘This purse shall pay your passage home.’ Foscarini chucked him a frog-shaped green velvet purse.
To Uruch’s horror, Nat’s paw no sooner snatched the velvet frog from the air than - with an appalling lack of Ta’rof - he stuck his snout in the purse. Worse, he then began counting the gold coins there and then. When Nat went so far as actually to bite one of these gold zecchinos, Uruch blushed to the rim of his taj. Mercifully, Foscarini only laughed and said,
‘Do not distress yourself, Uruch Bey,’ said Foscarini. ‘Can you blame him? He was in Sherley’s service a long time, after all!”
13
The following day, in the Piazza San Marco, Uruch asked Nat to tell him the true story of Darius and Gol. They were sitting on the pedestal steps of a winged lion and looking out over the lagoon. Uruch was sailing for Lisbon in a few hours and wanted to get the story straight for Hoseyn Ali Beg. Accuracy was paramount since Hoseyn would put it all in a letter to Gol’s father, and so Uruch took out his commonplace book and pen to take notes as Nat told the tale.
And that’s how it came about that the First Secretary of the Great Persian Embassy sat on the stone steps taking dictation from the former skink, runner and dogsbody of the disgraced Sir Anthony Sherley.
When they were done, they both walked down to the water’s edge and looked at the ships anchored in the lagoon. A few ships flew City of London flags.
‘I’ll sail home on one of those,’ said Nat.
‘In the Collegio they were saying that Sir Thomas Sherley’s been pardoned by King James and is sailing from Naples to London. Beware of Sir Thomas when you get to London.’
‘I’m sure he is just another swingbreeches like his brothers.’
‘Bravely said, Nat, but he is vicious. You heard what Antonio said: his brother Thomas will be his sword arm and vengeance in London. The only thing you can ever believe from Antonio’s mouth are his threats. I fear for you, Nat. I fear this half-crazed pirate Thomas Sherley will hunt you through the streets of London.’
Just then, Eli Elkin came marching towards them through the square’s market stalls, his shoulders twitching, head snapping this way and that and as uncomfortable as ever in his own skin. On top of which, he must have fallen asleep drunk in the sun, because his face was red, his mouth was dry and he reeked of stale wine and worse.
‘You’re going to help me,’ he said, and unfolded a single sheet of paper in a deliberate, pedantic way as if Nat had been trying and failing to unfold it all morning. Thrusting the paper under Nat’s nose, Elkin asked: ‘What’s it say?’
‘It’s a testimonial,’ said Nat. Elkin exhaled the long breath of exasperated patience. He counted to five and then said,
‘I didn’t axe you what it be. I axe you what it says. Now read it to me.’
‘“To whom it may concern,’ read Nat out loud. ‘“I hereby recommend for good and honest service in any task, Eli Elkin, a right faithful Christian, who, here in Venice, as well as in Rome and Persia, has ever been a most loyal factor unto His Excellency Sir Anthony Sherley, Knight and Ambassador.”’
‘That’s it?’ asked Elkin. ‘No credit? No name of no Jew who must give a fixed sum in dollars?’
‘No.’
‘Nothing saying pay such and such a sum to the said party, which is me, which is the bearer?’
‘Just what I read.’
Elkin snatched back the letter and folded it into four, giving Nat a contemptuous look. He twisted his neck, rubbed his eyes, and asked,
‘Do you know if they need rat catchers here, Bramble? Only I was thinking that, what with all the rivers and cellars here, they must do.’
‘Rat-catchers?’ asked Nat.
‘That was my trade. That’s how I first met Sir Anthony and his brothers. I was the Sherleys’ rat-catcher in their Blackfriars townhouse.’
‘I’ll pay you one gold zecchino for your letter.’
‘So this is a credit note, after all,’ shouted Elkin. ‘You cozen me, villain!’
‘You ask anyone who can read,’ said Nat.
‘This letter is the fruit of two years’ hard service. All I ever got from him beyond per diems. And you have it from me for one coin? You play me false.’
‘Here you are, have it back, then.’
With a curling lip, Elkin sold his testimonial for one single zecchino. He grabbed hold of Nat’s jaw, growling,
‘Give me that frog purse or I’ll snap you like a twig.’
Uruch stepped in and broke Elkin’s hold with a swift sharp blow to his arm.
‘Hide behind your infidel,’ sneered Elkin. ‘You’ll never brave me man to man.’
‘Man? What man?’ cried Nat. ‘You’ve snaffled your snout in Sherley’s palm like a bitch her master, and now you’re for galleys, Eli Elkin! But not me. Not me.’
‘No, not you. No matter what fate God sends me, I had rather give honest service as a true Englishmen, t
han be you, Nat Bramble. Because for sinners such as you, Hell spews out a special Man Of Fire, clothed head to toe in the Fire Everlasting. Hell’s Fiery Man comes to summon the wicked betrayer down into the very worst pit of Hell. Mark my words! Hell’s Fiery Man comes for you, Bramble, he comes for you!’
And with that, Elkin turned on his heel, strutted off and disappeared into the crowded Piazza San Marco.
14
Three days later, the Levant Company’s ship the Mayflower, one hundred and eighty tons burden, thirty-eight crew and one paying passenger, Nat Bramble, set sail from Venice for London.
Nat hooked his hammock by a stack of barrels marked ‘Oil of Petrolio’. What a luxury to have nothing to do all day! To be a masterless man! It was still illegal to be a masterless man in England but he wasn’t in England. He was in the hold of the Mayflower in the Mediterranean and he was free. To celebrate his freedom he took out his knife and scored N-A-T B-R-A-M-B-L-E into one of the dark resined stanchions, carving a winged Mithras underneath.
For the first week of the voyage he did nothing but sleep, eat and sleep. The slugging of oil in weathered barrels lulled him in and out of dreams seasoned by the hold’s odour of cumin and pepper. His daydreams were further spiced by a bold new ambition: Why not do in London exactly what Darius was doing in Tabriz and create a market for oil as combined heat and light?
Londoners used oil for everything but heat and light. The petroleum in these barrels would be used as liniment for killing lice and fleas. Oil lacquered canvas to make the waterman’s tarpaulin, and caulked the severed heads on pikestaffs on London Bridge Gate. Oil soothed coughs and toothache, cured gout and fixed new stones in the street. Oil sealed the seams on hulls, and sealed wounds as surgeon’s caustic. But why not approach Customer Hythe with the idea of importing Persian oil lamps, stoves and heaters? The Levant Company would make him Clerk of Works, and sit him behind a broad oak desk in Levant House, from where he would control the whole operation, buying Ottoman barrels and selling them from Galley Quay into the Cornhill Exchange.
The Trade Secret Page 21
