The Trade Secret

by Robert Newman

  ‘Can you stand up?’

  ‘Is the pain bad?’

  ‘Have you any people at the Brown Bull?’

  Nat turned back to the trough to scoop some water into his mouth. A cobb grabbed his wrist.

  ‘That water’s dirty,’ he said.

  The cobb carried the tall wooden scuttle on his back so easily that he looked like a giant insect that had learned to walk on its hind legs. The row of well-worn leather straps across his torso might have been an insect’s thoracic segmentation grooves.

  ‘I’ve got clean water here,’ he said.

  ‘I have no coins,’ said Nat.

  ‘You offend me, master,’ said the cobb, unslinging the wooden water scuttle and standing it upright on the ground.

  He dipped his willow ladle. Nat trembled as fresh, delicious, conduit water coursed down his throat, and over his chin and down his neck onto his chest.

  ‘Hold still,’ said the cobb. ‘Don’t wear it, drink it.’

  He poured another draught down Nat’s gullet. A young woman placed her shawl around his shoulders. The faces and words of all the men and women around him changed the tidal flow of his heart. He no longer resented the crowd’s curiosity, but felt ashamed of his own unworthiness of their kind concern. He gave a stunted little wave, forgot to say thank-you to the cobb for his water, and the woman for her shawl as he handed it back, and hurried away, hot tears running down his face.

  Stumbling through the Aldgate streets, many emotions crowded in on him. He sobbed with relief at having escaped the Brown Bull with his life. And he wept with grief that the crowd’s goodness had been there all along, but as invisible as the River Walbrook underground. The crowd had been harbouring kindness like a fugitive. Why did this kindness, so natural to citizens, only appear as a break with daily life? What made people foreign to their proper natures? What force channelled a city down such closed and narrow culverts? The bells of St Michael’s Church of the Murdering Mayor struck four. Nat ran towards Old Swan to do what he could to wreck Thomas Sherley’s plan and be revenged upon him. Once this latest Sherley was destroyed, then Nat would help build God’s city of justice.

  11

  Customer Hythe paced his walnut-paneled Fylpot Street office. He grew cold at the thought that he had been double-crossed by Bramble, who had not kept his appointment. The Spanish spy had flown the coop. If not in the pay of Spain, could Bramble be playing a double game? Was he a double agent secretly working for Thomas Sherley all along? Thomas Sherley’s spy inside the Levant Company? And exactly what intelligence had Bramble been stealing? The Customer’s heart sank. Downstairs from the Galley Quay warehouse roof, right below Bramble’s dovecot, clerks registered how much of what went where for whom. The order book was there.

  No-one carried more tonnage than the Levant Company. That was its great advantage. But steal its order book, and advantage became disadvantage. Light boats sail swift while greater hulks draw deep. A rival corporation’s smaller, swifter ships could beat the Levant Company’s three-hundred tonners to market. A hostile nation or corporation, a Basadonna or a Thomas Sherley needed only a spy on the inside to supply order books and shipping manifests stolen from Galley Quay.

  The Customer might not know whether Bramble served Spain or Thomas Sherley or rival English corporations, but he knew for certain how Bramble sent the stolen trade secrets: by way of his intelligencing doves!

  The Customer had been in the east. He was well aware how such tricks were done. He had heard tell what pigeons could do. Once, during a Chinese famine, for example, pigeons had been used to steal rice from the Emperor’s granary. They flew over the walls of the Forbidden City, gobbled the rice, flew home, and were given quicksilver to make them puke the rice. Back and forth went whole flocks, until they had coughed up a ton of rice, in return for which they were at last given a meal they were allowed to digest, while the stolen rice was washed.

  Instead of rice, Bramble’s doves were flying to the Spanish ambassador in Fenchurch Street, or to Basadonna on the Buontalenti, carrying a ton of intelligence about the Levant Company’s order book. Either way, the company’s sharers would not let the Customer remain long as Governor once they learnt how he’d lost so many orders to the competition.

  The Customer had one last hope to save his position as Governor. There was still a chance he could catch Bramble on the warehouse roof at Galley Quay. From its hook on the wall, he lifted down his ceremonial yatagan, the wavy steel sword presented to him personally by Sultan Murad III. He belted its ivory scabbard around his waist, threw on his goose-turd-green cloak and slammed the door behind him.

  Twenty minutes later, the Customer stood before Bramble’s pigeon house on the Galley Quay warehouse roof. The birds were trilling inside their forty-gallon barrel. He unplugged a dowel peg and the coop swung open.

  He looked in the pigeonholes. Nothing there. He was about to close the dovecot door again when he noticed that the turd tray was a stack of paper with writing on it. He angled his head to read. From the first few words he realised that this was a stack of Levant Company shipping manifests.

  The brace of pigeons fluttering pell-mell inside the barrel were in the way. He unsheathed his yatagan and slashed. A scarlet spray striped the inside of the barrel and a pigeon with a chevron-striped tail dropped down dead in a corner of the coop. He sliced at a blur of wings. The second dove, green and purple, flumped down. He lifted the stack of shipping manifests and carried it to the edge of the roof, where he tipped the still squirming brace of pigeons off the end.

  ‘A short last flight for you, my pretties,’ he said, watching the birds crash onto the wharf down below.

  He set the stack on the cupola wall, where he peeled away one damp rippled sheet after another. Quarterly reports from the old Queen’s reign. Bills of anchorage in Crete or Patras. Sailing times of ships long since sunk or sold. These were not trade secrets. This was old, old, stuff. This wasn’t spying, it was the petty pilfering of sheets that would have been used for privy paper or kindling.

  Yet there must be something to it, or else why the twitching of the Customer’s infallible antennae? Was this collection of musty old bills Bramble’s canny way of giving himself an innocent pretext for taking valuable topical documents up onto the roof, so that, if caught in possession of the new lists, he could always say, ‘Are these bills trade secrets? My, my, they all look the same to me. I’ve been using these old sheets of paper as the doves’ turd trays for years. Begging your pardon, I thought they were all worthless.’

  The Customer heard a light scraping, scuffling sound. He looked around. At first he saw nothing, but then on the copper roof of his cupola, he saw a tatterdemalion brown and white-feathered pigeon, its claws struggling to find purchase on the smooth surface. Strapped to its back was a neat blue satchel. So this was how Bramble received his instructions! Now the Customer would find out from whom: whether Spain or Tom Sherley. He unsheathed his yatagan.

  The brown and white pigeon cocked its head, its amber eye went from coop to Customer, who stood between pigeon and coop, with his sword raised. The bird flew straight for its coop as if the Customer were not even there. The Customer let the pigeon come on. When it was an arm’s length away, the Customer slashed. The pigeon closed its wings and tumbled forwards under the sword. The Customer scythed the air, hacking his black satin kneecap. He sheathed his sword. When he looked round, the brown and white bird was settled in the dovecot, feasting upon seeds and berries. The Customer shut the dovecot’s door.

  ‘Now to bring the mountain to Mohammed,’ he said.

  He rocked the pigeon house and toppled it over. Barrel slats smashed apart on landing. The structure had been made from an axle with a cartwheel at one end and a barrel at the other. He put his foot on the axle and rolled the dovecot around the roof. As the coop trundled its arc, the Customer saw through smashed slats the dazed brown and white dove, flailing and flopping around, struggling to stand then falling on its head. The Customer reached in
and grabbed the pigeon. He ripped off the blue silk satchel, chucking the bird over his shoulder. Then he removed his gloves for the dainty work of winkling a tiny folded wad of paper from the satchel.

  The cramped brown handwriting was so tiny that the Customer had to hold the thin slip of paper at arms’ length and rear back his head to read it.

  Sgr. Giovanni Basadonna,

  Following buyers confirmed:

  Messrs Salter, Sadler, Antrich, Ward buy:

  currants at 5 shill bale,

  pepper per bag 3 shill;

  indigo per chest 100 shill,

  Also, Steadman, Luck and Littler sell tin at £4 per cwt.,

  Sr. Thos. Shrl, esq.

  ‘So ends the career of Sir Thomas Sherley,’ he cried. Here was enough to hang the pirate. Oh, the workings of nemesis were beautiful indeed! For Sherley’s secret agent Bramble must have sent this message from Galley Quay, but instead of flying to Basadonna, his pigeon had come home to roost!

  There was a postscript - or so it seemed since it had been written in another hand:

  5 o’clock on Old Swan Stairs. Sir Thomas Sherley will be there. In flagrante delicto.

  The Customer hurried down the cupola stairs, barking commands at one and all.

  Within an hour, the King’s Messengers had a Privy Warrant to apprehend Sir Thomas Sherley at Old Swan stairs, and to deliver him into the custody of the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir William Wade, who by Privy Order was to wait on Tower Wharf steps until sunset.

  The Customer would deal with Bramble himself.

  12

  Giovanni Basadonna was standing up in the cathedral turret of Saint Mary Overy. The bell beneath his feet tolled the half-hour. Half-past four. Thomas was late. He should be in the top corner window of Nonsuch House by now, there to await Basadonna’s signal that all was clear for him to proceed to Old Swan for five o’clock.

  Basadonna looked across the river to Old Swan stairs to see if any traps had been laid. Old Swan seemed clear. He checked the approaches, running his eye along the north bank landings above London Bridge: Anchor Lane, Emperor’s Head Alley, Old Swan again - still clear - then Catherine Wheel Alley, Black Raven Alley and Fleur de Lys Alley, all the way to the Bridge.

  White water hurtled from a couple of London Bridge’s arches. The river hissed through Long Entry’s narrow vaulted arch with the ferocity of venom spat from a cobra’s mouth. Rivers were not so wild in nature as they were in the heart of this city. The gaily-painted Nonsuch House was out of all proportion with the rest of this pontoon bridge. It resembled a noblewoman lifting her skirts from the puddles of the flooded alley down which she had got lost. He felt like that dainty noblewoman himself when standing in Black Swan Alley, Bull Wharf, or whichever riverside alley or squalid stockyard or corn mill Thomas might choose to meet him in next. Except Basadonna was muddying his boots for a noble cause. He and Thomas were organising the evacuation from the City of London of that enterprising class of merchants who were being crushed under the yoke of the Levant Company’s monopoly. From now on, London’s merchant venturers could fetch their Eastern imports straight out of Livorno’s Riviera di Levanti. Everything was ready - ships, crews, warehouses. All that was wanting were regular lists of these merchants’ import orders before the Buontalenti, now anchored in the Pool, outraced the Levant Company to the Mediterranean and back again with the goods.

  Beneath Basadonna’s feet, the cathedral bell tolled five o’clock. As it did so, two official twelve-oared barges converged on Old Swan stairs. A sheriff’s Posse Comitatus. Basadonna’s heart sank through the soles of his feet to the tolling bell. Oh, what had Thomas done? How had he given the plot away?

  Basadonna crossed the turret, took off his brown velvet cloak and turned it inside out. He swung his cloak over the eastern parapet. Its bronze shaft-satin lining caught the late afternoon sunlight. He flashed the lining in the direction of the Buontalenti. Moments later, a boat rowed out from under the shadow of the Buontalenti’s bows into the late afternoon sunlight, the six oars dropping from vertical to horizontal like a water-beetle, as it cut a course for Horsleydown Stairs on the Southwark shore.

  Basadonna crossed the turret and swept his cloak over the north-facing parapet. A flash of bronze lining was the signal to warn Thomas, who should be in the top corner window of Nonsuch House by now, not to go to Old Swan, but to meet at the first stage of their rat run: deep in the meal floor of the London Bridge corn mills.

  A casement window opened in the top corner of Nonsuch House. Sunlight glinted on a pearl-encrusted feather in a tall silver hat. Thomas leaned out, looked towards the turret where Basadonna stood and waved.

  In the jauntiness of the wave, Basadonna saw the difference between them. This was not the dismay of a merchant venturer whose plans have come to naught, but the huzzah of a Christian soldier when battle is joined. Basadonna swept his cloak off the turret wall and onto his shoulders, fastened its ties at the chest and made for the spiral steps, cursing Thomas, cursing himself, and hoping only that he could get away.

  13

  As the church clocks struck five, Nat ran down the long passageway of Catherine Wheel Alley. He emerged onto rotting, neglected steps and looked upriver. Two twelve-oared barges were bobbing off Old Swan stairs. The barges were crewed by the Sheriff’s posse, his levy of a dozen able-bodied citizens and constables. Nat lifted his arms in exultation. His face shone with triumph. This posse was all his doing. He had levied them, him and his trained dove. Parboyl had carried the message to Customer Hythe! Nat was about to see justice roll down like mighty waters!

  Except where was the posse’s urgency? Why had they shipped oars? Why were they sitting about so? They should be ramping up and down the bankside, ripping tarpaulins from every barge that could hide Sir Thomas and his Italian. They should be trying to roust them out of every shed between Lion Quay and the Customs House. Yet here they were, getting sunburnt faces on the petty swells of smooth water above the Bridge. A couple of constables had even removed pipes from the tops of their boots. White threads of pipe smoke knitted the two barges together. He saw the Customer emerge from Old Swan Alley, flanked by Sheriff and Alderman. Aha! This would make those alehouse constables hop! But to his dismay the Customer stood on Old Swan stairs passing the time of day with the boat crews.

  Nat was aghast. What could be further from Isaiah’s vision of justice rolling down like a mighty torrent than Old Swan’s contented, late afternoon hum? Here above the Bridge the river was as still as a millpond. Tufts of down floated like flob on the brown water. A bullfinch sang its snorer’s whistle of a song. Stirred by the breeze, a few downy tufts of rosebay willow herb rose into the air. Nat’s gaze followed their ascent, and caught sight of a bright flash at the top of St Mary Overy’s turret on the Southwark shore. A man draped a cloth of bronze satin across the turret wall and then whipped it away again. A signal flash! Who was he signalling? Nat looked across to the upper windows of Nonsuch House. A corner window opened. A glittering plumed hat leaned out of the window. A silver-knuckled glove waved at the Southwark church tower.

  Nat jumped to his feet and shouted upriver to the Old Swan posse:

  ‘View halloo! There’s Sir Thomas Sherley there! View halloo! He’s in Nonsuch! View halloo. Sir Thomas is on the bridge!’

  ‘And how do you know for whom we wait, sirrah?’ the Sheriff shouted at Nat, ‘and you be not in league with Sir Thomas Sherley and sent by him to cully us, eh? Row down there, lads, and take up the traitor’s boy.’

  Seeing the barges making for him, Nat sprinted through Catherine Wheel Alley and along Thames Street. Blackraven Alley and Red Cross Alley flashed by as quick as fence posts.

  On London Bridge, he slowed, gasping for air, hemmed in by crowds. The roadway was loud with hooves, carts, barrows, pedlars’ cries and carmen’s shouts. A glinting plume on a tall silver hat ran out of Nonsuch House and headed south. Nat bobbed and weaved through the crowds after him, but the Bridge was such a confusion of shop-sig
ns and oversailing gables that there was no clear view one way or another. Nat lost sight of the silver hat, but kept running and searching through the crowds.

  Thomas must still be on the Bridge, which meant he still had to cross the Pool. There were bound to be more Sheriff’s barges in the Pool. Nat would raise the hue and cry when the villain made his dash for the Buontalenti. He knew the perfect espial, not up high but down low, from which he could survey the whole Pool. He ran into the corn mills and down one flight of stairs after another, all the way down, through grist and chaff, to the cloudy meal floor, where the Thames throbbed through the cast-iron edge-wheels, clank, clank, CLANK, clank, clank, CLANK.

  14

  Basadonna found Thomas lurking behind a timber prop in the depths of the corn mills. He put his mouth to the Englishman’s ear to be heard over the clanking chains.

  ‘How are we betrayed?’ he asked.

  ‘They set an intelligencer upon me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That same Bramble who betrayed my brother in Italy.’

  ‘No, I mean who set him on? Who knows about us? Is it Cecil? The Customer? Were you careless, or are we cursed?’

  ‘We’ll find out presently,’ said Thomas, ‘I’ve captured the spy. My man Elkin will deliver him to us.’

  ‘We can’t stay for him, Thomas. You must come aboard at once.’

  ‘Yes, only first let my man Elkin bring Bramble aboard.’

  ‘No, no, you don’t understand. There’s two boats of sheriff’s men at Old Swan and Customer Hythe himself! Andiamo! The launch is coming.’