The Queen's Constables

by David Field

  In any case, Lizzie had enough concerns of her own, as Robert seemed to regard their new surroundings as a playground in which he could learn bad behaviour from the ragged youths he befriended when he was allowed out into the dockside alleyways and foetid courtyards. He had soon learned to steal from vendors’ carts with the best of them, and came home almost nightly with torn clothing, bruises and cuts to which Lizzie would attend while exhorting Tom to exercise some control over his son, before he was taken up by a local constable, to the severe embarrassment of the whole family. At least nine year old Lucy could be kept indoors, although her increasingly petulant and morose behaviour, confined in the upper rooms, made her less pleasant to be around, and it was as well that she had taken to Mary like a big sister who could teach her to sew, wash and do all the other things that would be expected of her when she attained womanly status.

  But the hardest thing to accept, as the weeks drifted by, was the failure of anyone to hear anything remotely related to what might be the smuggling of Catholic priests into England on ships connected with the motley crew who frequented The Saracen’s Head. From time to time the same scrawny looking man dressed in the dowdy but serviceable garb of a seafarer would drift in and engage Tom in seemingly idle conversation, during which he would enquire whether anything of interest had occurred that might ‘engage our friend in Whitehall’. On each such occasion Tom had been obliged to shake his head, sigh, and suggest that perhaps they were all wasting their time.

  Back upstairs late at night, when Tom and Giles had finally assisted the last of the rolling drunks out into Thames Street, the four of them would sit around the table and enjoy a mug-full from the cask of ‘best ale’ that the brewer was prevailed upon to deliver from time to time for their private consumption. As the weeks droned on they found themselves discussing when they might decently retreat back to Nottingham, leaving a message for Walsingham that his plan, while a good one in theory, had not yielded any results. Then they were given cause to think again.

  It had been the usual sort of night, with a few noisy altercations that would have developed into full-blown fights, had Giles not stepped in as usual and intimidated the disputants into conceding that they did not really disagree, before inviting them to shake hands. Then into the crowded room walked a giant of a man with lank ginger hair down to his shoulders, and animal skins of some sort wrapped around his outer clothing, suggesting that he might have been on the road for some weeks. He ordered a large flagon of ale, then leaned in a corner for a long while, eyeing all those around him with a stern stare that made everyone nervous, and ensured that he had plenty of open space all around him.

  It was soon being whispered around the room that this was the infamous Phadrig Blunt, the terror of the Thames-side wharves, and the man who was currently seeking to enlist sailors into some sort of organisation that would somehow coerce the local shipowners into paying more money to their exploited deckhands. Many of those deckhands silently applauded what the man was about, but few dared associate, or even speak, with him, such was his reputation for mindless brute violence when crossed.

  He had been visibly drunk when he came in, and was even worse by the time that he called out to Mary for another pot. Mary duly obliged, and as she handed him the foaming pot in exchange for his money he grabbed her arm and pulled him to her, kissing her violently on the mouth. When she began to struggle and call for Giles, Phadrig kept hold of her with his free hand, put his pot down roughly on the floor, then began clawing at Mary’s bodice with his other hand. Giles came racing over and yelled for Phadrig to leave Mary alone.

  The man pushed Mary roughly away from him, then gave a loud animal roar and raced towards Giles, who jinked to one side, then smashed a straight left into Phadrig’s head. This seemed to daze him for a moment, then to everyone’s horror, and to screams from Mary, Phadrig made another rush at Giles, and was met with a virtual windmill of fist flurries to the right and left of his head that would have killed a man half his size. As he continued to soak up the punishment Giles sank a heavy blow to his stomach that caused him to bend forward in time for a left uppercut to jerk his head backwards with a force that threatened to remove it from his head. He bounced off the back wall, and was then caught on the rebound with another hailstorm of punches to the face. He was heard to grunt in final recognition of the hammering he was enduring, then to muted applause and whispered expressions of satisfaction from the onlookers he slid slowly into the beer-stained rushes on the floor. Giles grabbed his heels and dragged him to the door, through which he rolled him into the street, then walked back inside nursing his bruised knuckles.

  A grinning Tom handed Giles a pot of ale. ‘It may taste like donkey piss, but it’ll soak up the pain,’ Giles was advised as Mary threw her arms round him and offered to kiss away any bruises he might have acquired. As she backed away, promising to come back with water and a cloth, a small middle aged man slightly better dressed than their average customer placed a hand on Giles’s shoulder and enquired ‘Where d’you learn to fight like that, son?’

  ‘The Queen’s army,’ Giles replied, still slightly breathless from his exertions. ‘You still enlisted?’ was the next question, but Giles shook his head. ‘No, my friend. I joined up to fight the Queen’s enemies – not to butcher children and hang their mothers from trees. And who might you be, anyway, asking questions of a soldier what’s seen too much of the world for his liking?’

  ‘Timothy Barton, owner and captain of “The Kittyhawk”, currently moored down the road there at Bentley’s Wharf, but due to sail for Antwerp and Calais in a week’s time. Ever been to sea?’

  ‘Never,’ Giles replied. ‘We was supposed to be going over to the Low Countries a while back there, then we was diverted to Yorkshire. So no, never been to sea.’

  ‘Would you like to?’ Barton persevered. ‘I like the way you handle yourself, and that man Blunt’s long been a vexation to many a shipowner like myself. If you can do what you just did to the likes of him, I’d be glad to have you aboard even if you never lift a rope. There are plenty who can show you how, and I’ll hazard that not a man on board would be unwise enough to show you any disrespect while you learn.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Giles promised, and Bartram took his leave after promising him a shilling a day if he took up his offer.

  Later, as they sat round the table upstairs, opinion was divided. Mary sat bathing Giles’s raw knuckles with vinegar and insisting that he wasn’t going anywhere, certainly not for the immediate future, and perhaps not ever. ‘You saw what I has to put up with down there,’ she complained, ‘and it were you what brought me here, so the least you can do is stay and protect me from the likes of that big oaf, and others like him. How does we know he won’t come back while you’re away?’

  ‘Bullies like him is cowards as well,’ Tom advised her. ‘He won’t dare come back in here after a thrashing like that, because it’s not good for his reputation. Trust me.’

  ‘But what about others like him?’ Lizzie argued. ‘This is the roughest alehouse in London, I reckon, and what was you thinking of, the pair of you, bringing us down here in the first place? It’s not as if we’ve learned anything we can tell that feller what ordered us down here. What were his name again? Walters? Wallington?’

  ‘Walsingham,’ Tom corrected her. ‘And as for whether or not Giles should go to sea – which is what we’re supposed to be deciding – we might get to learn something useful. At least he’ll be with other sailors, and one of them might let slip something about how them priests is being brought into the country.’

  ‘Is anyone going to ask me what I wants to do?’ Giles demanded, and Mary kissed him lovingly on the cheek as she enquired ‘Does you really want to leave me and get yourself drowned?’

  ‘I can swim,’ Giles assured her, ‘but I doesn’t want to leave you, now that I’ve found you.’

  ‘There were a time when Tom said lovely things like that to me,’ Lizzie chimed in dourly. ‘Trust me,
Mary, it stops after a while, once they’ve filled you with bubbies.’

  ‘We’re missing the point,’ Tom reminded them with a frown. ‘It don’t matter what any of us thinks – what matters is what Walsingham wants us to do. I needs to ask him.’

  ‘I only hopes that he tells us to go back to Nottingham,’ Lizzie growled as she began to clear away the pots. ‘And if you two fellers thinks you’ve maybe had enough to drink for one night, it’s getting late, and some of us has to be up bright and early to fix breakfast.’

  Three days later, as the atmosphere in the upstairs quarters grew more and more tense with the uncertainty of it all, Tom found himself talking once again with the man who called regularly to enquire about progress. At least this time he had something to report.

  ‘I needs to speak urgently with our friend down the road,’ he advised the man in a hoarse whisper. ‘It’s all very well gassing with the likes of you, but I needs some advice, and urgent like.’ The man nodded.

  ‘This was anticipated. I’ll be back here sometime in the next day or two, and when I am, be prepared to take an hour away from here. It’ll only be for an hour, mind.’

  Two days after that, barely an hour after they’d opened for the day, the man re-appeared at the front door, and indicated with a jerk of the head that Tom should join him outside. Leaving Giles and Mary to serve the few customers who were already guzzling ale, Tom slipped out through the back door, made his way swiftly down the side alley through which the barrels were delivered, and met the messenger in Thames Street. They walked side by side under the shade of London Bridge, heading west, and Tom’s curiosity got the better of him.

  ‘We’re not going to Whitehall, surely? I were told to stay away from there.’

  ‘It’s just along here,’ he was told, and after another few hundred yards they slipped down the alleyway at the side of a chandler’s store where the man knocked on a side door, which opened seemingly of its own accord. Tom was directed up the stairs to the upper chamber, and there stood Walsingham, warming his back against a recently lit fire. They shook hands, and Walsingham smiled at Tom’s puzzled expression.

  ‘You will have noticed the bedding in the corner?’ he enquired. ‘This is one of those many establishments in this part of the city where rooms can be hired by the hour for clandestine meetings. We merely take advantage of the flagrant immorality that is the curse of our current society. Would that it were otherwise, but, as you can now appreciate, even that can be used to the Queen’s advantage. Now, what is so urgent?’

  Tom quickly advised Walsingham of the fight in the Saracen’s Head, and the offer that Giles had received from a sea captain. Walsingham nodded and smiled as he heard the details, then fixed Tom with a quizzical look.

  ‘What made you think that your colleague should not take up this promising offer?’

  ‘Well,’ Tom replied, ‘for one thing we don’t know if he’ll learn anything from it. And for another, I needs him in the alehouse to help out with the rough stuff. He’s a lot tougher than me, and a few years younger, and . . . ’

  Walsingham raised a hand to silence him. ‘That concern is easily overcome. I obviously have many men in my service who can handle that sort of thing, and I’ll arrange for them to attend your premises, two at a time, dressed like common sailors. You won’t know who they are unless they are required to restore order. As for your first objection, just think for a moment. We believe that these priests are coming in on English ships, and your colleague has just been offered an opportunity to travel on an English ship. It has to be a far more promising opportunity to acquire additional intelligence, even if it’s only by way of shipboard tittle-tattle between sailors. So of course he must take up the offer. Was there anything else, or have we concluded our business?’

  ‘Not really,’ Tom conceded, ‘except that the womenfolk’s getting very unhappy, stuck in that dreadful shithole. The Saracen’s Head is hardly the place for ladies.’

  ‘It was your choice to bring them with you,’ Walsingham reminded him, ‘and you must live with that. No-one said this would be easy, but perhaps at long last we may begin to make some progress.’

  Chapter Four

  Giles leaned back casually against the stern bulwark and tried to look disinterested as the Kittyhawk dropped its anchor midstream in the Thames Estuary, and the small rowing boat pulled out from the mud flats in precisely the same location on the Essex north bank as on the three previous occasions. The first light of a pale dawn lit up the sky to the east, and Giles could just make out a large wooded island of some sort directly off their starboard beam, with a river estuary entering the Thames from its left.

  On cue, the hatch leading to the captain’s cabin opened silently, and two hooded figures emerged on deck, wrapped in dark cloaks as if to give them warmth against the morning chill. But Giles was willing to bet the shilling a day that he was being paid that they were priests, and that – as before – the two men would be assisted down the rope ladder into the boat that was gliding out to meet them, the outline of the oarsman visible in the faint light from the hooded lantern that was being held aloft by the man in its bow.

  The smaller craft pulled alongside, and the two hooded figures descended into it and were rowed back to the point on the shoreline, just in front of the trees, where another lantern was being gently waved from side to side in order to guide the oarsman ashore. Giles smiled to himself as he had his initial suspicions confirmed. He now had something to report back to Tom, who in turn could alert Walsingham, and soon Giles could cease this pretence. He had no taste for seafaring, and he had been allowed simply to lounge around the deck, occasionally helping to play out an anchor rope, but in reality acting as bodyguard and general dogsbody to Timothy Barton. The other men resented him, although they also feared him, and he was not comfortable with his assumed role.

  ‘Why aren’t you below decks with the other men?’ Barton demanded suspiciously as he walked back across the deck after farewelling his passengers and saw Giles lurking in the half-light.

  ‘It smells down there,’ Giles replied gruffly, ‘and it’s too cramped. I prefers the fresh air.’

  ‘What did you think of what you just saw?’ Barton demanded, and Giles shrugged. ‘None of my business.’

  ‘You’re right, it’s not,’ Barton confirmed as he looked more closely into Giles’s eyes for any hint of a guilty conscience. ‘But it helps to pay your shilling a day, so keep your mouth shut. Don’t go mentioning any of this when you go back to your brother in law and your woman in the Saracen. You must have learned how to keep quiet when you were a soldier, and all those terrible things were happening.’

  ‘Bloody right,’ Giles replied as he spat onto the deck, and Barton’s eyes narrowed. ‘You sure you’re not one of those deserters?’ he demanded, and Giles shook his head. ‘We was discharged at Tilbury, further upstream there, and told that we was free to go until we was called on again. I think the Queen were feeling guilty about all them slaughters what we’d carried out.’

  ‘Just making sure,’ Barton replied, although he did not look entirely convinced. ‘The thing is that I’m going to need you in Newgate on Sunday, and I didn’t want you being taken up as a deserter if anyone recognised you. You’re from there, aren’t you?’

  ‘I never said where I were from,’ Giles corrected him. ‘But if you must know, it’s up north – a place called Nottingham. But what’s happening on Sunday?’

  ‘You’ll find out when we get there,’ Barton replied enigmatically. ‘Just make sure you’re up and ready by the middle of the morning. You’ll be paid your usual daily shilling, which reminds me – here’s what you’re due for this last voyage. Just remember to keep your mouth shut, right? Now get the rest of them up on deck and let’s raise the anchor.’

  Back at the Saracen’s Head there was the usual welcoming hug for Giles from a happy Mary, as he walked through the front door and weaved his way through the early customers towards the back room, where Tom was sea
ted counting money.

  ‘I hates it when you’re at sea,’ Mary complained as she kissed him yet again, ‘and it’s always so good to see you back in one piece.’

  ‘That may be the last time,’ Giles announced, and Tom looked up sharply. ‘Another landing?’ he enquired eagerly, and Giles nodded.

  ‘Yeah, just like them other three. The same place, too, so you better lose no time telling Walsingham. But I think Barton’s getting suspicious of me, so it’s perhaps as well that I won’t be going back on board, where he can have me done away with.’

  Mary gave a shudder and pulled him closer to her. ‘Don’t say that!’ she pleaded, and even Tom looked worried.

  ‘Time you made yourself scarce, I think,’ he suggested, but Giles shook his head.

  ‘He wants me to go with him on Sunday to somewhere in Newgate, he says.’ It was Tom’s turn to shudder.

  ‘That’s a foul place at the best of times. Believe me, I grew up there. And if he’s planning on having you done in, I can’t think of a better place to do it. If you gets murdered in Newgate, like as not they’ll never even find your body.’

  Mary gave a shriek and clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘You can’t go! I couldn’t bear it if you was killed, not with a bubby on the way as well!’

  Both men gawped at her with gaping lower jaws, and her face reddened with embarrassment and shy pride. ‘Well, why not?’ she challenged them. ‘After all, Giles and me’s been . . . .’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mary,’ Tom cut her off, ‘I think we all know what’s caused it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Giles demanded as he grabbed both her hands and kissed them lovingly. ‘As near as I can be,’ Mary beamed back at him, ‘but you can see now why I doesn’t want you getting yourself killed nor nothing.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ Tom added, ‘so that’s why he’s not going to Newgate on his own.’