‘Inshalla!’ barked the Customer, and all three men burst out laughing. It was an assassination the City much wished.
‘And perhaps pulling the strings behind it all,’ speculated Colthurst, ‘is your double-triple-gaming Don Antonio Xerley!’
‘If so,’ said Roe, ‘could this be part of the Thomas Sherley plot? Could Bramble be waving his flag on Galley Quay to signal Sir Thomas’s confederates?’
‘Flag?’
‘Bramble’s been seen waving a flag on the end of a pole up on the roof at Galley Quay.’
‘What? What?’ exploded the Customer. ‘You saw Bramble - the letter thief who sunk us in Venice - you saw Bramble up on my warehouse roof waving a flag at foreign ships and still you never told me!’
‘Calm yourself, Customer. Upon this letter’s arrival, I enquired after Bramble of the quay master who told me that he is training pigeons to fly further every day and so he waves this flag at the birds to send them on another circuit around the Pool, and to stop them coming home to roost too soon.’
‘Show me these goods sent to Mister Bramble of Galley Quay.’
‘Here’s a sample from the chest,’ said Colthurst.
‘Lentils?’ asked the Customer, who scooped a handful of hard green pulses and then let them clack back into the sack.
‘Qaveh beans, Customer,’ replied Colthurst. ‘In Constantinople they sip of this black qaveh drink in little china dishes as hot as they can suffer it. An aid to digestion, they say and it also lends alacrity.’
‘Black?’ asked the Customer. ‘The drink comes black from these green beans?’
‘They first roast the beans until they are as black as soot,’ said Roe. ‘And tasting not much unlike it!
‘Besides these beans,’ said Colthurst, ‘there’s a grinder and a couple of pots in the chest.’
‘Valuable?’
‘Gewgaws.’
‘So the only thing of value here,’ said the Customer, ‘is the bill of credit, then. Now, as to this, there is an issue of probity here. This money is not ours to receive, but nor can we be party to a Spanish paymaster paying a Spanish agent. I propose, therefore, that we endow the Merchant Taylor School with a sum exactly equal to the bill of credit, viz a twenty-five pound bursary to help poor boys gain an education.’
‘It speaks well of you, Customer,’ said Roe.
‘Inform the clerk of works and tell him to dismiss Bramble, too.’
So saying, the Customer scrunched Don John of Persia’s letter and bill of credit into a ball and threw them both in the fire. ‘Now gentlemen, if you are ready, we must meet the King.’
3
Stepping out of the kitchen door into the back garden, Nat was vexed to find Miep, his landlord’s daughter, already up and about. If that wasn’t bad enough, she was feeding sugared almonds to his scrawny, speckled brown pigeon called Parboyl.
‘Don’t feed him,’ snapped Nat, snatching the tatty dove out of her hands, ‘or he’ll never fly to Galley Quay.’
‘It’s only a bite,’ she said, putting the rest of the almonds back into the pocket of her grey, square-cut, bibbed apron of a dress.
‘No, not even a bite. Give him food and he won’t know whether he is coming or going. He’ll start thinking this is his home, and then fly back here with the messages which the Levant Company want me to train him to carry.’
It was her fault he had begun the day with a lie. Nobody at the Levant Company even knew he kept birds on the warehouse roof, let alone wanted his birds for carrying news. He was ashamed of himself. What was he thinking? Why bother to puff himself up in front of her of all people?
‘Nothing but food draws him home?’ she asked. ‘That’s his only loyalty? Don’t the other doves draw him to Galley Quay more than food?
He knew that this was her roundabout way of asking him if he had any other reasons apart from bed and board for lodging at Seacole Lane. Any reason that might have to do with her perhaps.
For two years now, Nat had lodged in a back garret of the Beijderwellens’ house on Seacole Lane in Snow Hill, opposite the Saracen’s Head inn. He had first seen the Beijderwellens when apprentices had stoned the Dutch Church on Broad Street.
The Dutch Church windows possessed the largest panes in the parish. Enough of smashing petty Papist stained-glass leads that made no more noise than cracking an ice puddle with your heel, the Dutch Church panes smashed with a sound like the noonday chimes! The apprentice boys had tried to get the crowd going, tried to get them to join in. Those Dutch didn’t want to be English, they were shouting, so why were they here? They kept to their own language, their own churches, and even wanted to bring over their own king. Come on! Clubs! Clubs!
Nat did not dare help the Dutch who were trying to drive off the mob, but he had a barrow with him that he trundled to the city ditch to find some timber to board the broken windows. At the stinking ditch, an open sewer, he pulled on his work gloves, took up a few duckboards, washed them in a puddle, and put them on his barrow. He carried the duckboards back to the Broad Street, where the Dutch were shovelling up a crunchy slush of broken glass. Watching them board up the church windows, he hoped they wouldn’t ask him where he got the timber.
One cold, rainy day a month or so later, the quay master at Galley Quay sent Nat on an errand into the Steelyard, the Hanseatic, Dutch and Flemish dock, where he’d run into Mr Beijderwellen. When Nat compared the tiny sentry box of a hut where the Dutchman clerked to his own cramped lodgings on St Lawrence Lane by Cheapside, Mr Beijderwellen had said he had a garret room to let on Snow Hill for a shilling a week plus chores.
The air was clean and clear on Snow Hill. On holidays and summer evenings, Nat had only to cross Holborn Bridge to be among Saffron Hill’s cattle-grids and open fields, and from his dormer window he was greeted each morning by the lurid pub sign of the Saracen’s Head Inn. What with his thick black moustache and his scarlet clothes, the Saracen reminded him of Shah Abbas in one of his killing moods.
Nat tried tossing Parboyl, but bird clung to glove. He pumped his hand up and down but couldn’t shake him off. Miep tried. The bird took off. Her eyes, which were very dark for so pale a pudding face, flashed with delight.
‘Vloeg, dvif!’ she cried. ‘Vloeg weg, lief dvifje! Fly dove, fly away, sweet little dove!’
Up Parboyl flew, circling the Turn Again Lane rooftops. Nat was exalted to see his bird find its direction and fly straight for Galley Quay. As he watched Parboyl disappear over Newgate Market, he heard Miep ask the same novice’s question he had once asked Darius:
‘How do the doves know where to take each message?’
‘The doves only know how to fly home,’ he explained, with a faraway voice as if he were reciting an old poem. ‘That’s all they know, but they know this one thing very well. No matter where they are, they can always get back to their dovecot. And when they are released that’s the one direction they fly, with a message strapped under their wings. I’m trying to train him to fly to Galley Quay so don’t be feeding him here.’
He heard a flutter and a thump behind him. He wheeled round. There on the lid of the rabbit hutch was Parboyl. Snatching him up in his fist, Nat rounded on Miep:
‘You and your sugared almonds have done this! It’s pointless. A peacock will fly more than him! Every day I carry him to Galley Quay and home again.’
‘Dvifje! Lief dvif! Clever Potboil, you have made Nat your carriage.’
‘Parboyl. His name’s Parboyl. Not Potboil. Have you risen so early just to bate me?’
Miep watched a shadow fall on him. Old Man Bramble was back. She never knew which Nat she was going to get. One minute he was all boyish zest, and the next he’d be Old Man Bramble with his mubblefubbles. One minute he’d be bursting with plans and schemes and dreams, his brown irises shining like conkers, and the next minute he’d be all sour comments and twisted grimace and what was the point of anything he’d like to know.
She had need of Nat’s keen spirit, and wished it were not
such a guttering flame. She needed his bright spark against the drizzling sea-fog of her elder brothers’ and her father’s snippy, narrow, discouraging platitudes, a sea-fog that she feared would infect her soul with the rheumatic fever that had claimed her folks. She sought him out to nourish what was different in her from the men in her family. They had an amused contempt for anyone who did not do as they did. The world was as it was with good reason, and depended upon the simple application of well-worn principles which had been revealed to the lucky Beijderwellens as to few others and which allowed them all to earn a steady wage at the Steelyards. No wonder her mother retreated into the mysteries of faith, a netherworld of spirits and apocrypha. When the English lodger arrived, she felt that his very existence gave the lie to the Beijderwellen philosophy, gave the lie to the way they always told her that once she’d seen a bit of the world she would think like they did and know that the world was as it was and couldn’t change. Because unlike them, Nat had seen a little of the world and he was still full of zesty projects and impossible schemes just like her! Well, half the time, he was. When he wasn’t being that knock-kneed twenty-one year old codger. Though closer in age to her than her brothers, he had already done more than they would in a lifetime. The problem was he rated himself too low. She thought she could do something about that. She made him her project.
‘Never mind the Levant Company,’ she told him. ‘Why don’t you set up your own pigeon post? Why not be an independent trader? Why not build your dovecot here?’
‘I won’t be here for very long.’
‘You’ve been saying that for the last couple of years. I wonder what keeps you here?’
‘Well, I should tell you that I’ve come to an arrangement with your father. An arrangement concerning you, Miep.’
‘Me?’ Despite herself she blushed to the roots of her hair. He took her hand in hers and looked deep into her eyes.
‘Well, I have been living here for two years now, and during that time we’ve spent a lot of time together, you and I, and so I have spoken to your father, and told him how I felt about you, Miep, and he has, I’m happy to tell you, agreed to my request to knock a penny off the rent every time you talk to me.’ She snatched her hand away. It was no use. He was just like her brothers. What happened to people past the age of twenty to make the spark go out of their eyes?
Nat couldn’t understand how it was that she had no inkling of the vast difference in experience in status between her and him who had once served secretary to a knight of the realm. What possible interest did she think she might hold for him? There was a chasm of degree and of experience between them. Truth be told, he sometimes forgot to remember this chasm, and would be chatting equably and enthusiastically as if they were indeed friends - before he’d suddenly scold himself, his cheeks and ears burning with shame. These piecemeal collusions were how the prisoner becomes habituated to his cell, and the pigeon to its hole. But not this woodcock. He had travelled too far and lived too widely to fall for a moon faced Dutch girl with freckles and red hair that stuck out unevenly as if she had been lying in straw. The hair came out of her linen cap in two bunches. The first rays crossing the kitchen garden’s dewy grass shone upon her bare calves, where her yarn stockings were rolled down to the ankles. The ginger hair on her shins turned blond as it caught the early sunlight. She caught him looking and so he said,
‘You look like the four of hearts.’
‘You’ll never see the five,’ she shot back.
He laughed. She was herself to herself. She had an independent spirit. He recalled how big that word independence had been with him when he was her age - and the recollection made him feel done in, spent. She reminded him of all the vim he’d lost. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be around her and feel so loose-toothed and over and done with. He didn’t resent her verve. He liked the independent way she’d hacked a short fringe that exposed her forehead all the way to the hairline, and the way she went barelegged in clumpy leather mules that wanted to be clogs, he liked her quick tongue and ready wit, but her vivacity made him feel hollow and tapped out. He knew he was hollow and tapped out. He just didn’t want to be reminded of it all the time. And so he called her old scold, old crone:
‘One year under the Spanish is like ten anywhere else,’ she replied. ‘I’m wise because of my one hundred and fifty years.’
‘Tell me something wise, old woman.’
‘You think that courage or heart or spirit is something you have like a flame in a temple and when it goes out that’s that, but it’s not. It’s something you get by doing.’
4
The Levant Company had convened a meeting at the Guildhall with King James, who was trying yet again to abolish their monopoly on importing Mediterranean and Asian goods.
The high-ceilinged Guildhall was dominated by the two towering wooden effigies of Gog and Magog, carved and painted grotesques of London’s ancient demons, the evil giants who had to be vanquished before the city could be built. With goggle eyes and gaping gobs, Gog and Magog glared down in amazement on the assembly.
Customer Hythe slid an opened ledger across the table.
‘These accounts show the great revenues that the Levant Company renders Your Majesty’s Exchequer each year in import duties.’
King James slammed the ledger shut with a great boom that reverberated off the high ceiling as if Gog and Magog had drawn a sharp intake of breath.
‘By trading in yon Mohammedan lake, the Mediterranean,’ said the King, ‘you put oor Royal Dockyards to an expense of boat-building far in excess of the tallies totted in yon ledger. That’s the truth of the matter, and all the sultanas in the world will nae make it false. My brave Sir Thomas Sherley puts it right well: instead of spending all oor treasure building fleets to protect yon currants, I might hae the sewers and drains, the fountains, pleasure gardens and public walks which every other Christian kingdom save mine alone, it seems, is adorned withal. He tells me the more profitable course is to switch trade away from Venice and Constantinople, altogether, and into the free port of Livorno, which some call Leghorn, where there are no imposts to be paid such as we must pay the heathen. He tells me yours is a naughty trade. I hear ye’ve contracted a kind of moral gonorrhoea from the Sultan. So, I’ll not renew your monopoly. The past was yours, right enough, but I shall award the coming years’ prosperity to my champion, Sir Thomas. For we are at the pinpoint of the protractor, Customer Hythe. D’ye know what that means? It means the deeds we do now will radiate far and wide for centuries to come!’
So saying, he swept out of the hall with all his retinue - all bar Secretary of State Cecil.
Everyone else shrank back as those two great powers in the land, the Governor of the Levant Company and the Secretary of State, glowered each other. The Customer raged at Cecil:
‘You were supposed to have told this bumpkin King what was good for him! You were supposed to lance this Leghorn boil on his brain, bring him here to sign the charter, and arrest Tom Sherley, who is a great a threat to trade, and yet is somehow he’s still at large. Your spies are sleeping!’
Who’d have thought so small a man as Crookback Cecil could produce a voice as loud as he did in response to this?
‘My spies are dying!’
His shout filled the hall. Gog and Magog went ooh.
‘This very morning,’ Cecil resumed, ‘my best agent was blown up by a tripwire grenade Tom Sherley placed in a lantern.’
‘Then hang the pirate for murder!’ stormed Customer Hythe.
Gog and Magog went aah.
‘How can we when we stole the lamp from his chambers? You’re not in the Sultan’s seraglio now - there’s law here, Customer, law! I need evidence before a king’s favourite can be imprisoned and tortured.’
‘Give the Scotsman the note you got from the Doge!’
‘Hearsay,’ replied Cecil, long elfin fingers fiddling with his amethyst pendant. ‘A note from the Venetian ambassador warning that Tom Sherley is plotting with one Basa
donna to destroy the Levant Company is not evidence. Documentary proof is what I need. A scribble. A jotting. A confidential list of goods. Trade secrets. Anything that shows him to be a traitor plotting against England’s most vital corporation.’
Customer Hythe bowed.
‘Do you follow him?’
‘Not even God can follow a man through London,’ replied Cecil. ‘Once we have him on a charge of treason, we can extract the whole truth in the usual way, King James or no.’
‘How do you propose to get this evidence, my lord?’
‘I don’t know. Do you?’
Gog and Magog awaited his answer with bated breath.
The merchants returned from the Guildhall to the Levant House on Fylpot Street.
‘Lord, Lord,’ said the Customer, as the clerk of works helped him out of his goose-turd-green velvet cloak. ‘From above and below, by secret plot and public law, the company is under attack! Woe to the man who tries to enrich the realm! Woe to him! Have you dismissed Bramble yet?’
‘Forgive me, Sir Henry,’ said the clerk of works, ‘only with the move from Billingsgate I’ve been so busy that I’ve not had a chance to.’
‘Don’t. I have a job for that serviceable villain after all. The rascal knave has already ended the career of one Sherley, perhaps he’ll destroy Sir Thomas too. I do believe Providence put that Spanish letter into our hands to remind me of Bramble’s existence. I’ll visit him tomorrow on the roof at Galley Quay.’
5
Nat climbed out onto the roof of the Levant Company’s Galley Quay warehouse. This roof was his domain, and his alone. No-one else ever came up here except him and his pigeons. A crossing wind rippled the bright silver puddles.
Here on the roof, Nat’s round, salvage timber dovecot was a kind of Temple of Mithras where he kept alive the flame of his days with Darius. He couldn’t say exactly what it was about those days that he was trying to keep alive, though. The sense of when life was larger? The memory of what it felt to love? Of when life seemed something he could shape and not be bent by? Maybe all of those things. He didn’t know.
The Trade Secret Page 25
