by Peter Tonkin
Frizer was clearly beyond calculation or strategy. He might as well have been wielding a club. He brought his blade down from a position that was so high it didn’t have either a name or a designation in the books of fencing. The force of the move made him grunt with effort and threw him off balance. Poley stepped aside and let the steel whisper past his shoulder. Then he resumed his original position in terza. Because Poley’s hilt was low, his blade rising almost from knee-height, Frizer came in high again – this time with a little more finesse. The murderous bully had obviously realised Poley had no intention of killing him. So he could more or less do what he liked without fear of reprisal.
A miscalculation, as things turned out.
*
This time Poley’s reply was more than defensive, his whirling blade dismissed his opponent’s in riposte, and the deadly point returned to the line of attack with dazzling speed, striking for his opponent’s face. Frizer jerked his head aside with such force that his upper body followed it, throwing him entirely off-balance once more. He staggered down the slope, fighting to stay on his feet. Poley changed the angle of his thrust and struck at once, throwing himself forward into a lunge. The point of his rapier pierced Frizer’s leather breeches and disappeared into the outer curve of his right buttock. Poley jerked it back, even as Frizer fell to his knees, dropping his weapon and clutching at his wounded backside with a howl compounded of agony and outrage.
‘Let that be a lesson…’ said Poley.
He would have added more but a blow across the back of his head felled him face down in the kennel. The gutter ran down the centre of the street. It was a couple of feet wide and maybe six inches deep. It was full of the effluent created by the occupants of the houses on either side. Luckily, at this time of day the nightsoil from numberless chamber-pots that filled it in the morning was diluted by water from the various commercial and domestic buildings nearby. Water from washing people, clothing, shops, houses and animals. Still, there was enough of it to drown in, had Poley just been left lying face-down there for long enough. But he wasn’t.
Even before he took his first water-filled breath, Poley was distantly aware of strong fists closing on his arms and pulling him erect. He seemed to hang there, strangely suspended. He thought once more of Baines dangling as he slowly strangled at Tyburn. Distant voices held a bellowed conversation. One voice close to his ear clearly belonged to the leader of the men holding him. The watch, as likely as not; and their leader the local constable. He heard the questions, but was far more interested in the answers, many of which came as a revelation to him. And proof-positive that he was caught in a trap after all.
Yes, he was known to the vociferous witnesses: as Poley, a notorious trouble-maker.
A Catholic recusant and whoremonger at the least.
Yes, indeed, his near-fatal attack on the wounded innocent Ingram Frizer was unprovoked – except that he announced his hatred for Frizer’s master Sir Thomas Walsingham and for Master Secretary Cecil, Walsingham’s friend and colleague.
And, by the same token, they said, he had voiced his support for the Earl of Essex and his faction. He might even have been overheard to say on more than one occasion, that the Earl was fitter to be seated on the throne than was Her Majesty.
Nobody offered a word of contradiction to any of these lies and slanders. Not even Poley himself who was so far removed from the reality of what was going on that he could not even make his mouth work
It was enough for the constable. Poley distantly felt himself to be in motion.
‘It is sedition at the very least. Perhaps treason,’ the enforcer of the law decided. ‘You witnesses follow along. We’ll go to the Justices first. I wouldn’t be surprised if this situation ends up in the Fleet, the Tower or even Tyburn.’
But first it went to Newgate.
Newgate was not the nearest prison, but it was the most convenient for several reasons, Poley reasoned, as the power of thought began to pierce the haze of agony pulsing out of the wound at the back of his head. Particularly if the entire incident had been as well-planned as it now appeared to have been. The principal benefit would be that Justice Hall was in session and his case could be presented to the Justices of the Peace at once, with the testimony of the witnesses immediately available. Furthermore, he thought, as waves of nausea began to sweep over him as a result of the attack, the face-down visit to the gutter and the way he was being handled now, he was in no condition to mount any kind of defence – and would not be so for some considerable time. His silence would no doubt allow the witnesses’ accusations to stand. Nevertheless, he found himself imagining the conversations he might have with judges of varying standing, persuasion and readiness to condemn those before them to the mercies of Rackmaster Topcliffe, chief interrogator at the Tower, or the Three-legged Mare at Tyburn.
*
These thoughts occupied the time it took them to drag him along Cornhill into Poultry, then down Cheapside through yet another market, into Newgate Street and along it to the corner of Old Bailey, where the ‘gate’ itself stood; or rather the towers that had flanked it, extended now with cells and courtrooms, the major of which was Justice Hall. But the gate was hardly ‘new’ it had existed as an opening in London Wall since Roman times and had functioned as a court and prison since Henry II had been king. Its cells would no doubt be packed today with those passing through Justice Hall, but Poley was spared any wait – or any incarceration therefore. For the time-being at least.
Poley, the constable, his watchmen and the throng around them pushed through into the Hall itself. The first thing Poley saw clearly in an uncounted time of sickening pain and flashing lights was a bench of Justices frowning down on him. The first words that made any clear sense since the answers to the constable’s original enquiries were those of the constable himself as he recited the accusations: brawling in a public place, attempted murder, sedition against Her Majesty overheard by witnesses here present, public contempt against Her Majesty’s councillors most especially Master Secretary Cecil; hardly surprising in a recusant whoremonger such as the prisoner Poley was widely known to be.
The Justices hardly needed to bother with examination of the witnesses, or hearing any plea from the concussed and still-inarticulate accused, before finding him guilty on all counts and sending him down to the cells to await transfer to Westminster and further examination and sentencing by the senior and much more powerful judges who sat in Her Majesty’s Court of Star Chamber.
Poley endeared himself to none of the other occupants of the long holding cell by vomiting onto the rancid straw flooring as soon as he was chained in place. He might have requested access to the filthy bucket which passed for a chamber pot before emptying his belly but he knew the rules. Access to the bucket came at the whim of the guards who had to loosen the leg irons to allow it. And they did that only once or twice in a day unless there was coin available to bribe them with. Poley was wide enough awake to know he would have more urgent need of the guards’ indulgence in due course. And to note the fact that, as with his sword, his purse had gone missing somewhere along the way. With a little care he could shuffle the stinking straw away from himself without pushing it too close to his nearest neighbour. He managed to do this, then he simply curled up on the filthy, stone-cold floor and passed out.
As things transpired, he need not have been so careful. After what appeared to be a couple of moments of deep unconsciousness, he was woken by the guard as he loosened the leg irons. ‘Up,’ he ordered. ‘They’re here for you.’
Still dazed, Poley pulled himself unsteadily to his feet and allowed himself to be guided out of the cells to a reception area. He saw at once that a good deal of time must have passed, for Justice Hall was empty and the sky outside the windows was dark. He also noted that while he had been asleep he had somehow managed to roll into his own vomit. And the unusual weight of his ice-cold codpiece warned him he had also wet himself.
The men who had come for him were wrapped i
n cloaks, their hats pulled low over their eyes. One of them closed a pair of gyves joined by a short chain round his wrists, then they lead him out of the prison and into Old Bailey. They hurried him through the icy, clear-skied night down Old Bailey past Lud Gate and Black Friars into Water Lane which led down to a set of steps set into the north bank of the Thames. At the Water Lane steps they called, ‘Westward ho!’ and bundled him into the skiff that answered their hail.
Beneath the chilly magnificence of the night, Poley’s faculties were beginning to return, but they were of little use to him. He could see the star-filled sky high above with the promise of a rising moon but he could make more sense of the distant constellations than he could of his current situation. An icy easterly breeze swept up-river from the Bridge towards the twin palaces of Whitehall and Lambeth standing brightly on each bank ahead. He shivered convulsively, his mind clearing a little further. This was not the first time he had been struck on the cranium and he recognised the results of yet another blow. He reached back as best he could, given his chained wrists and felt the back of his skull. His hair was thick and set solid with dried blood. Gentle probing revealed that there was swelling beneath the carapace, but no softness. That fact alone seemed to help him start to organise his thoughts. That, and a burgeoning anger at himself that he had managed to get himself into this situation. And at the fact he was being so slow to make a full assessment of what was actually happening here and why.
He was clearly bound for the Court of Star Chamber as the magistrates in Justice Hall had said. Which meant the next set of judges he would likely face would be members of Her Majesty’s Privy Council. With any luck Master Secretary Cecil would be presiding – and in that possibility lay some hope of an explanation if of nothing more. ‘Nothing more’ seemed the most likely outcome – certainly not a declaration of his innocence and an honourable discharge. This had all been too carefully planned. Her Majesty’s senior advisers sitting in her most powerful court would have a purpose in all of this. And that purpose would be fulfilled whether he understood what it was or not.
*
The skiff slowed to a stop alongside the Westminster Stairs and Poley was hurried ashore. With one guard at each shoulder, he stumbled up the steps into New Palace Yard past the fountain, before he was guided roughly to his left. The door into the Great Hall stood on his right hand, closed and guarded. The smaller door into the Star Chamber gaped on his left and he was thrust through this almost brutally. There were passages and stairs leading upwards before at last the door to the Chamber itself was opened before him.
The Star Chamber, named for the design of its ceiling painted like the firmament he had just been gazing up at, was unlike any other court Poley had ever been in. He knew the place, of course, for his work as an intelligencer had brought him here as witness and informer on more than one occasion in the past. But now he stood as the accused, and was forced to take a whole new perspective on the place. It was more than the fact that the great room was lit by candles and lamps now. It was the fact that he had come through the door that the accused entered by whereas he had only ever entered through the door used by witnesses and officers of the court. There was no bench such as there was in Justice Hall – it was replaced by a table behind which those members of Her Majesty’s Council sat. Or a representative sample of them did – nine of the nineteen who could serve as Her Majesty’s Privy – private - Councillors.
Poley looked along the length of the Chamber towards the central chair, the position of ultimate power where Master Secretary Cecil habitually positioned himself. Cecil was not there. The Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and Chancellor Sir Thomas Edgerton was in his place, with Lord High Admiral Howard of Effingham on his right and the Lord Chamberlain, young Lord Hunsdon on his left. There were others there, of course, six of them, but Poley hardly registered their presence. Hunsdon and Effingham would have been here no matter what was going on, Poley thought. But the Lord Keeper was in charge of keeping the Earl of Essex safely confined in York House. Why had he come away from that duty to replace Master Secretary Cecil now? And why had Cecil needed replacing – or wanted to be replaced?
Fighting to maintain some kind of dignity in spite of his battered head, his filthy, stinking clothes and his chained wrists, Poley drew himself up, squared his shoulders and stood tall. Edgerton, Howard and Hunsdon looked at him coldly, unimpressed. He knew them all; had worked for them all as a courier if as nothing more, and yet he could have been some random stranger plucked at hazard from the lowest trugging house and thrust into the dock before them.
‘Call the witness,’ ordered Lord Keeper Edgerton.
One witness, thought Poley. Someone who could distil all the accusations that had brought him here so far. Who on earth…
A door half way down the length of the chamber opened and a slight man of middle years with short-cropped dark hair and a clean-shaven chin stepped in. Poley recognised him at once, but the surprise of seeing him there was so great that he wondered for a heartbeat whether he was dreaming.
Until Lord Keeper Edgerton spoke. ‘You are Master Cutler and Silversmith John Yeomans?’
‘I am My Lord,’ nodded Joan’s husband.
‘You own an establishment in Gracechurch Street?’
‘And a house on Hog Lane, yes My Lord.’
‘And you recognise this man, the accused?’
Yeomans’ narrow brown eyes swept over Poley, taking in the bruises, the filth, the manacles. Poley had never before noticed how small those eyes were. How mean. ‘I do My Lord. It is Robert Poley who lodges with my wife and myself at our house in Hog Lane. He has done so for some good long time. Since a year or two after Armada year.’
‘And what have you learned about him in that time?’
Yeomans glanced back at Poley, smirking with ill-concealed triumph. He’s not going to tell them I cuckold him weekly, thought Poley in a kind of Pyrrhic victory.
‘He is a recusant,’ Yeomans began, ‘though he plays the game of obeying the laws so as to escape too heavy a fine for his Romish inclinations. He consorts with others of like-minded Catholic beliefs. I have heard him speak against the Council on many occasions. Against Master Secretary Cecil in particular. Just as he conceals his true beliefs, he conceals his liking for the Earl of Essex. I have recently heard him discuss how the Earl has a better claim to the throne than does Her Majesty. That a young, powerful monarch such as he would make, could be another Bolingbroke, destined to rule in her place.
‘As though Her Majesty were Richard II. Indeed. I have heard as much said in secret treason,’ said Lord Hunsdon.
*
‘I have heard him share the Earl’s calumny that her Majesty is ‘as crooked in her disposition as in her carcase’ begging your indulgence for repeating it myself, My Lord. It was said, I believe in reply to a just and well-earned punishment served out by Her Majesty when she boxed the Earl’s ears.’ Yeomans persisted, bowing and smirking; the very personification of oily duplicity. Given a crouch back, thought Poley, he would make a creditable Richard III on stage at the Globe. What did the malformed monarch say in the play that bore his name? For I can smile and murder as I smile. It was John Yeomans to the life.
‘You have our indulgence for quoting another man’s treason in order to trip him,’ said Lord Admiral Effingham. ‘I was myself present during much of the incident you refer to.’
There was a debate, Poley knew, as to whether it was Lord Admiral Howard’s hand that had stopped Essex drawing his sword against the Queen when she boxed his ears or Captain of the Guard Raleigh’s. No matter which it was, they both earned the Earl’s undying hatred. ‘You have done well to alert the Council to this sedition,’ the Lord Admiral broke into Poley’s thoughts. ‘But what proof can you offer beyond your word under sworn oath?’
‘This, My Lord.’ Yeomans produced a tatty, oft-fingered volume and passed it to the nearest guard as though ridding himself of some unholy, poisonous thing. ‘He keeps it close by him at
home. He has a secret cavity in his bed.’
‘The only secret cavity I have in my bed belongs to his wife!’ shouted Poley as he realised what Yeomans had handed over – though only Heaven above knew where he had got it from. ‘These are the lies of a cuckold set on revenge! Do not believe a word, My Lords.’
A moment of silence settled on the Star Chamber. It was as though Poley had never spoken. Edgerton looked up from the book Yeomans had caused to be passed to them. ‘It is the banned book A Conference on the Succession,’ he said, glancing at the others. ‘We need no further proof of guilt. We will discuss his fate at full council, having referred the matter to Master Secretary Cecil and Her Majesty. In the meantime, take him to The Fleet.’
Whitehall led into The Strand at Charing Cross; The Strand led into Fleet Street. The Street led to the Fleet Bridge and the Lud Gate beyond it, then a sharp left turn a little way down Ludgate Hill, between the bridge and the gate itself, took them into a narrow alley leading to Belsavage Yard and the prison. It was by no means a long walk but it gave time for Poley’s head to clear further. The temptation was just to give up and let whatever was happening simply wash over him. But so much careful planning had gone into getting him here that he could not resist trying to work out what the scheme was likely to be and his probable place within it. But before he had leisure to do that, he had the immediate situation to take care of. And to do that he was going to need either coin or credit. Credit – because his purse like his sword had vanished.
