by Ann Swinfen
They plunged into a technical discussion full of theatrical jargon, so that I began to feel left out.
‘I shall see whether I can find an apothecary. I need to replace the medicines I used on the journey,’ I said, getting up and setting down my empty ale pot.
They smiled and nodded, but I doubt they heard a word I said.
For a while I strolled around the town. Most of it was quite new, probably built in the last thirty or forty years, since the English ships had first begun to venture past the North Cape. I found a pleasant, clean apothecary’s shop, where I was able to purchase everything I needed and pay with English coins. Rowland Heyward had given me a purse of Russian coins before I left, and Pyotr had explained their meaning and values to me, but I was saving them until I reached Muscovy. I also carried a letter for the agents in charge of the various Company houses, directing them to supply me with more coin, clothes, and anything else I might need.
‘Clothes?’ I had asked, puzzled.
‘If you stay beyond the start of autumn,’ Heyward said, ‘you will need the kind of clothes the Muscovites wear – furs, mainly. Thick boots. Do not refuse them. It is common in that place to die of the cold.’
I hoped I should not need to make use of this offer, but I kept the letter safe nonetheless. After I had made my purchases, I walked back to the inn, where I found that the remaining players had joined Simon and Cuthbert. Some were drinking ale, others were carrying their belongings and the costumes into the inn. Davy was impressing a crowd of small children with his acrobatic tricks.
It was clear that they had all turned their minds to what lay ahead and how they might spend the next weeks plying their trade in the town. More than ever I felt shut out.
‘Stay and dine with us tonight,’ Guy said. ‘The fleet does not move on until tomorrow. We are told that the food is good here. The cook on the Bona Esperanza is somewhat lacking in imagination.’
For a moment I hesitated, then I shook my head. It would only add to my sense of being an outsider. I was fond of the players, but when they became absorbed in their craft I knew I was not part of their world. Oddly, I had felt more at home with the affairs in Seething Lane, discussing how to break a difficult code with Thomas Phelippes, although I had gone there unwillingly at first. Still, there was no use dwelling on that. The world of Seething Lane, Walsingham, Phelippes, and the others was gone for ever.
‘Nay,’ I said, ‘I had best return to the ship. You will drink and talk late, while I know we are to leave at dawn tomorrow. I will wish you God speed.’
They slapped me on the back, wished me a successful mission, warned me to be careful amongst the barbarians, but I could see that their minds were elsewhere. At the last moment Simon decided to walk to the quay with me.
We stood together on the stone-built quay, waiting for the pinnace to come and carry me out to where the Bona Esperanza lay at anchor.
‘I cannot believe we may not meet again for a year,’ Simon said.
I felt an embarrassing urge to weep, but I turned my back to him and stared out to sea. It was still almost as light as midday, although at home the evening would have been drawing in by now.
‘Perhaps I shall find Gregory Rocksley snug at St Nicholas,’ I said, ‘waiting to travel home on this year’s fleet. Or hear that he has sent a letter from Astrakhan, saying that he is on his way to Greece and will be returning via the Mediterranean.’
‘You do not believe that.’
‘Nay.’
We were silent, watching the pinnace drawing nearer.
‘You have the gloves for Sara?’ I said.
‘Aye.’ He paused. ‘I wish I were coming with you.’
‘No you do not. You are going to persuade Cuthbert to allow you to play Tamburlaine.’
He grinned. ‘Perhaps.’
The pinnace bumped gently against the side of the quay, where thick ropes were slung to save the paint of mooring vessels.
‘God go with you, Simon.’
‘And you, Kit.’ As I turned to jump down into the pinnace, he grabbed me in a rough, boyish hug, as he had done many times before. But then I felt his lips brush my cheek. Before I could turn or speak, he was running back along the quay. I tumbled into the pinnace, my mind in confusion.
I remembered Simon’s emphatic words all those weeks ago on the way to Durham House: ‘My tastes are not that way inclined.’ Did that mean he had guessed my real identity? We had known each other for more than four years, spent much time in each other’s company, lived in the same lodging house. Somehow Walsingham had discovered I was a girl. Had Simon done so as well?
The sailors rowing the pinnace asked some questions about my time in Wardhouse – what did I think of the place? I answered abstractedly. My face was burning. I scooped up a handful of cold sea water and splashed my cheeks. If the sailors noticed, they probably thought I had been imbibing too much of the Wardhouse ale.
Did Simon know I was a girl? Had he really kissed me? I was tormented by the thought, and I could not hope for an answer before my year in Muscovy was over.
Chapter Five
The fleet sailed east from Wardhouse along a barren coastline which showed almost no sign of habitation. Low rounded hills were clothed in thin grass dotted with occasional bushes, the sort of terrain I have heard described as tundra. Near the shore there were patches of bog. Here and there rocky inlets or the mouths of streams and rivers opened a view deeper into a land that was sparsely wooded with pine forests, interspersed with occasional patches of scrubby moorland. The whole place had a desolate, despairing air. We saw no permanent buildings, though there were a few clusters of tent-like dwellings, not unlike those Harriot had sketched for me of the native peoples he had seen on his Chesapeake expedition. Twice we saw groups of men fishing from small coracles. These, Pyotr explained, were the Laplanders, or the Sami as they called themselves, whose tents were erected near the coast in summer during the fishing season.
A few days after our departure from Wardhouse, we sailed past one of the wider estuaries. There seemed to me to be nothing notable about it, but the pilot officer called my attention to it as I stood on deck watching the land slide by, breathing in the sharp clean air, and wishing myself back in the dirt and bustle of London.
‘Do you see that, Dr Alvarez?’ he said. ‘That is the mouth of the Varzina River. It was there that some Muscovite fishermen found the two missing ships from the first expedition into these waters. The Bona Confidentia and the Bona Esperanza. It was the spring of the year after they disappeared. All the men were on board, they had taken shelter, the ships were sound, the supplies remained in plenty. But every soul was dead, in the very act of eating, or writing, or playing cards.’
I had heard the story before, though I had not known where the ships had been found.
‘Did you say one of the ships was called the Bona Esperanza?’ I shivered.
‘Aye. But she was not the first ship to be called that, nor will this ship be the last.’
‘I hope it may not be a bad omen.’
‘Captain Turnbull has sailed this route for years, man and boy. You will not find him wandering off into the arctic, to the place the Russes call Novaya Zemlya, as those men did. Their commander was a fine soldier, it seems, Sir Hugh Willoughby, but knew nothing at all of the sea.’
He spoke with all the scorn of the professional mariner.
‘Why was he the commander, then?’
He shrugged. ‘A gentleman courtier? I do not know. It was back in the days when the boy king was dying, it seems. Her Majesty’s brother. A long time ago. Things are managed differently now.’
‘But if all those men died, how do we know they went to this place – Novaya Zemlya, did you say?’
‘Willoughby had kept an account of where they had gone, all written out carefully, but not a true log, as we should keep one now. It just stopped, with the words “Haven of Death”.’
He seemed to take a ghoulish relish from repeating the words.
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‘Poor creatures,’ I said. ‘Yet it sounds as if they did not suffer for long, all dying suddenly, and together.’
‘Froze to death,’ he said with authority.
I did not contradict him, but it seemed strange to me. If the men had been so cold, surely they would have huddled in their bunks, under piles of blankets. They would not have been sitting playing cards. It was an unpleasant mystery, and did not make me feel any more eager to visit this forbidding land.
Pyotr joined us by the rail.
‘Disputed territory, that,’ he said waving his hand towards the coastline. ‘Sweden claims it. Norway claims it. Muscovy claims it. The Finlanders claim it. And the people who live there are mainly the Sami people.’
‘People live there?’ I said. ‘I thought those men we saw in the coracles came only to fish.’
‘They are nomads. They live in tents and follow their reindeer herds. They move further south in the winter, which is why Willoughby’s scouts could find no people in the area when they sheltered here. You may see the Sami sometimes in Muscovy. But they are a different people from the Muscovites, with a different language.’
I welcomed a diversion from the fate of Willoughby and his men.
‘Do not tell me. You speak Laplandish as well?’
He laughed. ‘Nay. I have heard tell it is a strange tongue, very difficult. Besides, what would be the need? A few of them come into Muscovy from time to time, to trade furs, or to hire out as sleigh drivers in the winter, when the ground is frozen and everyone travels by sleigh. They speak enough Russian.’
‘They have horses? It would be a hard life for horses in such a place.’
‘The Muscovites have tough little horses who can endure the bitter winters. But nay, the Sami use reindeer to draw their sleighs. You may see some this winter.’
It was clear he was already certain that I would be here in Muscovy when winter came. It was not a prospect I relished.
Eventually, after some days’ sailing with changeable winds, we left that barren coastline behind and entered a wide channel leading to a vast bay of the sea, which the captain told us was some four hundred miles across at its widest, though very irregular in shape.
‘It is also the outlet into the sea of the river Dvina,’ he said, ‘the major river which flows from south to north in Muscovy. We keep a fleet of boats and barges on the river, to carry our goods into the interior and to bring out the furs, wax and tallow which we buy from the Muscovites.’
‘You do not carry them by road?’ I asked.
He smiled at my ignorance. ‘Nay, Dr Alvarez, we do not. And you will not spend a day here before you realise why. During the months of summer, which are short enough, God knows, most of the land is soggy with melted snow. The roads are channels of mud, used by peasants on foot, for the most part, to go from village to village. Anything on wheels is apt to find itself sunk to the hubs in mud.’
Christopher Holme was standing with us and nodded his agreement.
‘I haven’t been here for fifteen years, when I was a stipendiary in Yaroslavl, but I remember the difficulties of transport. You can move about on horseback. Their ponies are hardy little creatures. But moving goods has always been a problem. Water transport in summer, travel by sleigh once land and water are frozen solid.’
‘Does that mean I shall have to travel by water to reach Moscow?’ I asked. I had decided I must make a start on my enquiries in the capital, after I had discovered all I good from the Company’s men in St Nicholas.
‘We should travel together,’ Master Holme said. ‘It would be unwise for you to travel alone, at least until you hold an official pass from the government. I shall make my way from St Nicholas to Moscow by stages, stopping at our main Company houses, once I have permission to travel. I need to acquaint myself with the state of affairs at each of them.’
It sounded as though I would be obliged to make slow progress, but I comforted myself with the thought that at each of these Company houses – or ‘factories’ as they were often called – I could make enquiries about Gregory Rocksley. Any information I could glean would benefit my search. I was not quite sure what Master Holme meant by ‘permission’, but I did not like to show my ignorance by asking.
It took us some time to cross to the far south-eastern end of the great bay, which Pyotr told me was called the White Sea. At first we sailed along the wide channel, about as wide, I should say, as the sea between Kent and France. The wind was spasmodic, so our speed dropped sometimes to almost nothing; then it would pick up, only to drop again. At length the two shores drew away and the full extent of the White Sea was revealed. The ship changed course to a more easterly direction, but hove to as the short summer night approached.
The nights were now not as brief as they had been, for it was early August and the sun dropped below the horizon for a short time. I knew that the fleet did not stay in these northern waters later than early September. It seemed impossible that they could be trapped by fog and ice so soon, but every mariner assured me it was so. The White Sea itself froze solid.
As we took up our position for the night, I noticed the sailor Jos coiling down a rope on the main deck, so I climbed down the companionway from the poop to speak to him.
‘Will the fleet really stay here no more than a month?’ I asked.
He nodded, sitting down on the coil and pulling a clay pipe out of his pocket. I had been surprised to see the sailors smoking, for I thought tobacco might be too expensive for men on their low wages, but it seemed the Company supplied it to them cheap. The reason I learned from the ship’s surgeon, in one of the very few conversations I had with him.
‘Aye, tobacco keeps them calm in times of danger. It also helps to stave off the pangs of hunger when supplies run low. The Muscovy Company does not provide it out of kindness.’
He gave a twisted smile, showing yellowed teeth, which suggested he made use of the same supply himself.
‘Would you like me to get you some?’ he offered.
‘I thank you,’ I said, somewhat coldly. ‘But I do not smoke the weed.’
I thought it an odd and slightly unpleasant habit, though Harriot had often spoken of the aborigines he had seen smoking when he had gone on the Chesapeake expedition. He gathered it was some kind of ritual denoting friendship.
Once Jos had his pipe fairly alight, he took it out of his mouth, peered at the bowl with a grin of satisfaction, then clamped it between his teeth again.
‘It’s dangerous to bide here more than a month,’ he said. ‘Into September. Once – it must be five years ago, or six, I reckon – we was held up. One of the barges bringing wax up the river from Kolmogory got itself stuck on a mud bank, and we had to wait. Orders from the Palace. We must bring the full quota of wax. Desperate for candles, they are, see? A’nt enough wax in the whole of England to light up the Queen’s palaces. And wax for all the lawyers’ seals.’
He puffed reminiscently on his pipe, blew out a cloud of smoke, and coughed. There was one benefit from his smoking. Whenever we were near the land, we were troubled by clouds of tiny biting flies, but the smoke seemed to keep them away.
‘So we waited until the wax was loaded on to another barge and brought down the Dvina to Rose Island.’
‘Rose Island?’ I said.
‘Island offshore from St Nicholas. That’s where our buildings are. Rose Island because the whole place is covered with wild roses. Tear you to bits, they would, if you was to go wandering around in the dark. Smell fine, though,’ he conceded.
‘So what happened when the wax finally arrived?’ I said. Jos was inclined to wander off the subject.
‘It was all hands to loading it. I sailed with Captain Turnbull that year too. Captain and agent, they was frantic to have all loaded and the ships away, but we didn’t leave till the first week of October. ’Sblood, I never want to sail through that again!’
‘Through what?’
‘Great floating islands of ice. Ice mountains, they call the
m, or icebergs, but I call them floating ice islands, for they don’t stay put on land, they float about on the sea, and they can smash a full man o’ war to splinters. The worst thing is, what you see is only the least of it. You may think the ice island is a hundred feet away, but all the time it will have a prow or a shelf underwater, sticking out ready to hole you below the waterline, and you none the wiser.’ He shuddered.
‘That year there was thick fog everywhere. We crept out of the White Sea without harm. Thought we was safe. Started to head up toward the North Cape, feeling our way through the fog, when this great ice island come looming out of the fog. Twice as high as the mainmast, it was, big across as London Guildhall, what you could see above the surface. God knows what lay below the surface, for we didn’t. Captain, he grabbed the tiller – no time to shout orders to the helmsman – and we heeled over as we changed course, heading much too close to land. I was by the seaward rail, and I swear that ice island was coming directly for me,’
He crossed himself, oblivious of the Romish character of the gesture. ‘It began to slide astern, but then there came this terribly scraping, all along the side of the ship. She’d hit us.’
I gasped. ‘Did you sink?’
It did not seem likely, for here he was, alive, and so was Captain Turnbull. If they had fallen into that sea in October, they would surely have died of the cold, if they had not drowned.
‘Nay, but the caulking was torn away in a great strip along our starboard side. Two men had to go over on ropes into the sea to caulk it, or we’d have split.’
I looked down into the darkening waters and trembled at the thought of what those waters must have been like, full of ice and shrouded in fog.
‘The two men,’ I said, ‘what happened to them?’
‘Both died afterwards of the cold. But the rest of us lived. And the ship was saved. And the wax for the royal candles.’
The following morning we weighed anchor and headed toward the Muscovy shore, where I could see one large building topped by a curious pointed dome, which must be the monastery of St Nicholas. A small town of low wooden houses huddled around it, as if for shelter, like chicks around a mother hen. It was the monastery which gave the place its name, and before the Company had been set up to trade here, there had been nothing but the monastery, a few fishermen, and the houses of the small community that served the monks.
