The Queen's Constables

by David Field

  Tom had to urgently suppress a snigger when he heard Lizzie using words like that, but so far as they could tell the ruse had been successful, and the callous conversation among the assembled drunks was all about the fate that would be likely to befall the handsome young man who’d put more than one of them in their place during the past few weeks. As for Mary, it was all too much, and even though she knew that Giles would come to no harm she was distressed by the cruelty being expressed by the uncaring and vicious louts who thought nothing of feeling her up as she served their ales, and offering their services as a replacement for Giles in her bed. She retired to the back room and allowed herself a few sobs as she wondered what was really happening to the man in her life, and the father of her unborn child.

  She need not have concerned herself. Once unloaded from the wagon outside the well appointed house of the Constable of the Tower, just across the Green, Giles was met by the Constable himself, who shook him warmly by the hand, escorted him into his parlour and invited him to take a seat before the blazing log fire and partake of a mug of mulled claret.

  ‘You come highly spoken of by Master Walsingham,’ the Constable advised him, ‘and I have instructions to accommodate you in the guest quarters upstairs. They’ve been occupied in their time by at least two Queens of England, so they should be to your liking. You’ll only be here for a few nights anyway, since I expect the Master here in person by the end of the week.’

  Two days later, wrapped in a heavy cloak to ward off the steady drizzle, Giles sat in the rear of a large wherry that was being rowed steadily downriver under the command of Walsingham and some grizzled individual clad in heavy leather that instinct told Giles it would not be good to get the wrong side of. After an hour with no sounds other than the muffled splashes of their oars, the raucous clamour of the swooping seagulls seeking a feed as the retreating tide exposed the occasional sandbanks, and the muted sounds of commands being called from the decks of the sailing vessels that were taking advantage of the same ebb tide to drift without sail out towards the open sea, Giles called out.

  ‘That looks like it might be it – over on the left there.’

  Walsingham ordered the solitary oarsman to pull towards the shore, and within minutes they were sinking their boots into grainy sand, and looking towards a long copse of trees that seemed to run for the whole width of the beach in front of it. Giles walked further on until he could spy the channel of fresh water that ran into the wider Thames, and he had little remaining doubt.

  ‘Unless there’s another piece of land just like this one further down that way,’ he announced as he nodded downstream, ‘then I reckon this is it.’

  The man with Walsingham had been examining the top of the beach where it met the copse of trees, and he nodded. ‘He may be right, my lord. There’s lots of signs that people’s been coming and going across here.’

  ‘And it will suit your purpose?’ Walsingham enquired. His companion nodded. ‘If you’d care to wait just a few minutes, I’ll see what’s on the other side of this line of trees, but I’m pretty sure that I can hide a dozen men here every night until the next landing. Then we’ll have us some fun and games.’

  Not wishing to learn more about the precise nature of those ‘fun and games’, Giles wandered back down the beach and stood by the boat until the other men returned, and they were then all rowed back upstream. During the return trip, which was against the ebbing tide, and therefore took the heavily puffing oarsman twice as long, Giles was advised that although Walsingham and his companion would be dropped off at Whitehall Steps, the wherry would continue down to Westminster, where Giles would be met by a guide with a spare horse and taken to the house in Chelsea to which the others should already have transferred.

  They were barely a day ahead of him, having taken their time to load everything worth taking from their possessions in the Saracen’s Head once they had closed the doors at the end of the day’s trading on the day after Giles had been taken to the Tower. Posted on the front door was a notice announcing that the premises had been closed on the order of the Lord Chancellor, and they finally left by way of the back yard, which led via a narrow alleyway into Thames Street. They’d been supplied with directions, and as the smoke began to emerge from the chimney on the late afternoon of their second day in the roomy house with the long front garden, Mary glanced out of the window, gave a yell of delight and rushed outside to throw herself at Giles as he wandered wearily up from the gap in the hedge that lined the country road used by travellers heading west out of London.

  Supper was hastily prepared, and Giles recounted his adventures since being removed forcibly from their company. ‘Walsingham says to wait here until he wants us again,’ he advised them, ‘but I don’t reckon that’ll be until they’ve caught one of them priests and tortured him for the truth about whereabouts in England they’re all headed for.’

  Lizzie shuddered and complained yet again that ‘We’d all be best off back in Nottingham, then at least Mary and Giles could do the decent thing and get themselves married.’

  ‘There’s a church of some sort down the road here,’ Mary announced as she squeezed Giles even closer. ‘I saw the tower when we was coming here. If we’re going to be here for a long time, can’t we get married there? After all, we doesn’t know how long we’re going to have to wait for that there Walsington to give you more orders.’

  ‘Walsingham,’ Tom corrected her, ‘and we needs to make sure that this here church isn’t too Popish. We’ve never talked about religion, Mary, since there’s been no need, but . . . . . well . . . ’

  ‘Me and Giles has talked about it,’ Mary enthused, ‘and I thinks the same as him, that them wicked Catholics is just blasphemers. I can’t claim to be religious, and I only went to church regular in Sneinton because the law says as how I have to, and if we starts going to the church down the road, then we can soon find out if it’s good enough for us to get married in, can’t we? After all, the bubby’s going to begin to show soon, and I can’t let my bodice out any more, so what does you all think?’

  There was an awkward silence before Giles slipped from his position next to Mary on the bench, knelt on the rushes, took her hand in his two and enquired ‘Mary Cossall, will you marry me?’ A tear formed in Mary’s eye as she leaned down, kissed Giles’s hand and whispered ‘About bloody time, Giles Bradbury, since you was the one what put the dumpling in my oven.’

  On the first Sunday of their stay they made their way to All Saints Church, just up the road, and although the service that they sat through was far too ornate and ‘damnfangled’ for Tom’s strict and primitive tastes, he was eventually persuaded by Lizzie that they owed it to Mary and Giles to allow God to bless the union that they’d already forged, and avoid the stigma of bastardy for the child that was likely to born in the next few months. It had already quickened, and Lizzie drew on her own experience of two births in order to calculate that they’d have another mouth to feed come the New Year.

  As for the mouths that they already had to feed, they’d made what for them was a small fortune from the sale of ale in the Saracen’s Head, and taken together with the extra fees that the two men were earning in their clandestine work for Walsingham, they were more comfortably off than any of them could remember. Tom and Giles had never formally agreed how the money was to be divided, but Tom raised the subject tactfully as he sat with Giles two weeks before the planned wedding date, gazing up at the stars twinkling in the clear cold air of a cloudless October evening.

  ‘Have you given any thought to where you’re going to live when we gets back to Nottingham?’ he enquired, and Giles looked momentarily taken aback by the question.

  ‘I hadn’t rightly given much thought to it, to be honest with you. Things has been happening so fast since Walsingham first come to see you, and I certainly didn’t expect to be married this soon in my life.’

  ‘You’re not having second thoughts, is you?’

  ‘No, course not. I wouldn’t ha
ve . . . well, you know . . . if I didn’t think that Mary were the one for me. But that still don’t mean that I’ve given any thought to where we’re going to live. I don’t even know how much it costs to build a house – do you mind telling me how much yours cost to build? Or were it already built when you bought it?’

  ‘I built it,’ Tom replied with a proud smile. ‘I weren’t a carpenter for nothing, and when I worked for my uncle I helped to build lots of houses. It’s all to do with how you gets the frame up and buried well enough into the ground, see? You starts with stones in the ground, then you puts the big posts in, and joins them together with plugs of other pieces of wood. The secret’s in getting the right wood in the first place, then you gets lots of smaller pieces and weaves them in between the uprights. Then you gets a load of mud from the river bank, mixes it with straw, and smears it all over the weave. You’ll need longer straw for the roof, so you has to wait until next harvest time for that.’

  ‘Where will I get the land?’ Giles enquired, almost totally at a loss to absorb all this detail, and Tom smiled. ‘Depends who you wants for neighbours, but there’s some spare land along our street, what Robert and Lucy play on when the weather’s fine. It belongs to the town at the moment, but I reckon they could be persuaded to sell it to you for ten pounds or so. There’d be lots of garden ground at the back, but that won’t be no problem for you, since you used to work on the land, didn’t you?’

  ‘Ten pounds is all very well,’ Giles reflected, ‘but where will I get the wood, how much will it cost, and how much would you charge me for the building?’

  ‘There’s plenty of green wood up Arnold way,’ Tom advised him, ‘and we could borrow the constables’ wagon to carry it down into Barker Lane. I reckon you could get all the timber you needed for another ten pounds – maybe less. So that’s twenty pounds. We can haul the mud up from Leenside ourselves, and as for the cost of the building, I’ll do it for nowt if you do something for me.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Have you seen the state of the land at the back of my house?’ Tom smiled. ‘Lizzie’s forever complaining that we should be using it to grow parsnips and the like, but I doesn’t know where to start. You make me a proper garden, and I’ll build you a house.’

  Giles had been doing the calculations in his head. ‘I reckon I could find the first ten pounds already, what with the money I’ve saved, the money we gets from Walsingham, and the money I got from Barton for all that going to sea. How much do you reckon is due to me from the sales in the Saracen’s Head?’

  Tom smiled. ‘At least another fifteen, so you see – you’ve already got the money. Once we gets back to Nottingham, and once winter’s over, we can get started.’

  Giles broke the happy news to Mary, and for the next week they sat and dreamed about what their new house would look like, what sort of furniture it would contain, whether the expected baby would have its own room, and what they’d grow in the garden. They’d almost forgotten their impending wedding until Lizzie reminded Mary that she’d need to wash her best gown, and perhaps let it out a little.

  The wedding went off splendidly on a crisp November day that threatened an early snowfall, but mercifully held off. The blushing bride wiped away the tears as they stood on the steps of All Saints Church in Chelsea, and gave her own thanks to God for sending her Giles. Giles, unknown to her, was giving similar thanks to God for the gift of Mary.

  Their relative wealth ensured a very comfortable Christmas with roast goose, plum pudding and generous quantities of wine, for which they’d acquired a taste while posing as publicans. The first snow fell a week later, and as Mary gazed happily through their front window into the long front garden in which Robert and Lucy were pelting each other with snowballs, she squinted through the falling flakes at the solitary figure heavily cloaked against the elements, and called out to Tom.

  ‘Who’s that coming up our front path? I hope it’s not trouble.’ Tom looked over her shoulder and gave a soft curse.

  ‘Trouble for somebody, anyway. That’s Walsingham. Clear the table of all them breakfast things and throw some more logs on that fire. We’ve got an important visitor.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘First things first,’ Walsingham smiled encouragingly as he sat across from Tom and Giles at the empty table, his back to the roaring fire, and handed each man a small velvet bag. ‘Your latest payments. You may keep the bags as well, and each of them contains the ten pounds that you are due in the service of Queen Elizabeth.’

  ‘That’s twenty pounds now,’ Giles whispered gloatingly as he opened his bag and counted the coins, before slipping them into his jacket. Tom was less impressed.

  ‘You didn’t just come here to give us our wages, did you?’ he demanded suspiciously, and Walsingham’s smile remained unbroken as he looked behind him to confirm that they were alone. The women had taken themselves into the kitchen, where they were engaged in baking bread, and Robert and Lucy were still waging a snowball war in clear view through the front window.

  ‘As you correctly surmise,’ Walsingham confirmed in response to Tom’s question, ‘matters have moved on since our last meeting, and we have further need of your services. Bradbury’s, anyway.’

  ‘Why not me?’ Tom demanded peevishly. ‘Giles has done his share, surely, and I’m not one for sitting around.’ Walsingham looked into each of their faces in turn.

  ‘Which of you has the greater skill on the land?’ he enquired, and Giles was obliged to confirm that it was him. Walsingham nodded, and advised them that ‘There’s a certain house in Dunmow that has need of a gardener once this foul weather lifts, and the new Spring is upon us.’

  Since neither of his audience had an immediate reply, Walsingham persevered.

  ‘We were, thanks to Constable Bradbury’s accurate recall of where the priests were being landed, able to capture one of them who has, for several weeks, been our guest in the Tower. His faith may have been strong, but not sufficient to surmount the experienced attentions of certain of our skilled officers in there, and eventually we obtained from him the likely location of a house in Essex to which he was to be escorted once he landed. Someone in France must have been very unguarded when giving him his landing instructions, but he was eventually persuaded to supply us with the name of his intended host, along with further advice that this gentleman has a modest manor house on the outskirts of the village of Dunmow, which is in Essex, to the east of here, and less than two hours’ ride from the beach on which he was landed, prior to being intercepted. We made the necessary discreet enquiries, and the information we were given proved to be correct. The manor house is known as “Felfield”, and its proprietor is one Sir Henry Felton, the only son of a former candle maker to the late Queen Mary, and a suspected Catholic of the old persuasion. It is, you would agree, highly unlikely that this captured priest, who has spent the past four years in France and was born and raised in Yorkshire, would possess that amount of information unless it were correct?’

  ‘What was that about work on the land?’ Giles enquired, and Walsingham was clearly in the mood for expanding on recent successful intelligence work.

  ‘Our enquiries in the village that exists around the manor house revealed that the estate is currently without a head gardener. There are several youths who do the routine labouring work around the shrubberies and hedges, but no-one to direct their work, or to ensure that when the good weather returns the estate will enjoy the magnificent blooms in which Sir Henry takes such a pride.’

  ‘So you want me to apply for the position?’ Giles enquired without any obvious enthusiasm, and when Walsingham nodded, Tom objected. ‘The poor bugger’s only been married a few weeks, and there’s a bubby on the way.’

  ‘Even better for his assumed identity,’ Walsingham smiled, ‘since the Queen’s spies are not in the habit of trailing pregnant women around with them.’

  ‘You’re suggesting, in all seriousness, that I expose my wife to danger, in her condition?
’ Giles demanded, slightly red in the face, and Walsingham merely smiled back at him, seemingly unfazed by the objection. ‘I merely say that you will be less likely to be suspected of working as a spy for Her Majesty if you have a wife with a child on the way.’

  ‘And what does you propose that I do, while all this is happening?’ Tom demanded, and for the first time since his arrival Walsingham looked unsure of himself. ‘You might perhaps be best to loiter in the locality, and pass on any important messages to me from Giles.’

  ‘I’m not very good at loitering,’ Tom growled. ‘I’m more your man of action. And how does you propose that Giles gets information out to me – by sending Mary out with little messages?’

  ‘Mary is your wife? The younger of the two women back there in the kitchen?’ Walsingham enquired, and when Giles nodded his confirmation, Walsingham nodded back. ‘That would seem to be a good arrangement. If Mary can obtain employment in Felfield House that necessitates her visiting the neighbouring village – for example, by working in the kitchens – then she can get word back to Tom.’

  ‘And what will I be doing in the village, exactly?’ Tom demanded, ‘Playing the part of the local drunk?’

  ‘A matter for you,’ Walsingham replied casually. ‘I can’t be expected to think of everything.’

  ‘You haven’t told me what it is you wants me to find out,’ Giles reminded him, and Walsingham transferred his gaze back to Tom.

  ‘Let’s see how familiar you’ve become with this sort of work, given your previous natural talent for solving crimes, Senior Constable. In my position, what information would you require from Giles, assuming that he can sell his services as Felton’s gardener?’ Tom thought only briefly before supplying his answer.

  ‘First of all, I’d like to know whether or not this here manor house that you’ve learned about really is being used as the stopping off place, or whatever you call it, for priests being smuggled into the country.’