by Peter Tonkin
Tom, Ugo and the four laden servants crowded into the room and put the various pies on the table. There was more food than they needed now, but they were willing enough to do their best in the matter of consuming everything in front of them. While Ugo opened the wine, Tom cut open the venison pie and piled the steaming contents on the trenchers which immediately began to soak up the rich, sweet gravy. As he worked, he became aware of a soft, serpentine movement around his ankles. Astaroth had smelt the lamprey pie, he thought. Then he sectioned Sir Thomas’ gift and the hungry group arranged the cold, fragrant wedges on the bread trenchers behind the venison, the better to eat the hot food before it cooled and leaving the cold pie until later. Before he sat down to say grace and start eating, Tom piled some of the fishy filling onto Astaroth’s plate - a gesture that had become habitual in a mere 24 hours or so. The cat sniffed it delicately, then began to wolf it down.
*
‘So,’ said Poley round a mouthful of venison pie, you have two hanks of hair. Lord Robert keeps saying that he could not separate Essex and Raleigh with a sheet of parchment but perhaps, Master Musgrave, if you have a sheet of paper we should lay these items side by side upon it.’
‘The white of the paper will allow us to see the true colour of the hair more clearly,’ agreed Tom, his voice thick and his gullet mired with venison pie-crust. He reached for a glass of Rhenish and cleared his throat with a lengthy draught. He rose, left the table, found a piece of paper that he had been recording the names of those who had booked lessons and the time he was expecting them and returned, turning it over so that the clean side was uppermost. Then he reached into his pouch and carefully removed the two lengths of hair. He put them on the paper and they all craned forward to look more closely at them.
Tom had, of course, examined them before but never on white paper and never side by side. Both were red, both lengthy - the keepsake winding the curls into a circle before tying them together with a short length of narrow red ribbon. Without undoing this it would be impossible to judge their length with any accuracy, though their russet colouring was clear enough. The colour of the curls emphasised not only by the whiteness of the paper they were lying on but also by the vivid scarlet of the ribbon binding them together. The strands from Hal’s hand also tended to curl but it was difficult to judge whether they were the same colour as the love token beside them.
‘For a proper comparison,’ said Poley, stirring the strands with a dismissive finger, ‘we need more of these.’
‘Or perhaps, ‘said Tom, pointing towards the beribboned locks, ‘fewer of these.’ He wiped the blade of his dagger and used the point to cut the ribbon then, again with the point, he separated a few strand and moved them to lie beside those pulled out of Hal’s cold dead hand. They were strikingly similar.
‘But are they identical?’ wondered Poley. ‘And even if so, what does that prove?’
‘That Hal did not die alone,’ said Tom. ‘As he tumbled backwards down the stair, there was someone standing in the doorway of Forman’s occult chamber. Perhaps they pushed him or perhaps the surprise was enough to make Hal step back. The boy reached up as he fell. Whether or not the person in the doorway tried to help him or hurt him, the boy reached out and caught these hairs from that person’s head. These remained in his closed fist throughout the experiences that his corpse went through. It is tempting to suppose this stranger to be a man but we have already established that even a restless parrot can cause enough shock and surprise to send someone back out through the door, so - man or woman: someone watched him fall and die.’
‘But why attack Hal?’ wondered Ugo.
Tom turned to Poley. ‘You said something about my lady impatience when talking - in secret as you supposed - to Kate Shelton at the Rose. What did you mean by that? What do you know that you have yet to share?’
‘Little enough, except that my pursuivants keeping watch on Forman’s house kept warning me that she was the most regular of his visitors. Even after he had sent his household to the country just as Sir Walter has done.’
*
‘And did your pursuivant spies tell you of any other regular visitors?’
‘None who were regular. Many who visited once or twice - Spenser amongst them - and one or two whose faces they could not see. Also, being men whose intellect stands even lower than Humiliation Gouge’s, they kept watch on the front of the house - not the back. So there might well have been visitors coming and going through the garden as well as through the front-door with their faces muffled.’
‘Like the man who called himself Will Shakespeare and bought poison from young Hal in John Gerard’s shop,’ added Rosalind. ‘But wait a moment, surely I saw hairs like this bound up in the rope that repaired Forman’s broken banister. A fancy piece of rope-work designed to hold the broken halves together. Such as a hangman puts above his noose or a sailor might use aboard ship.’
‘Well,’ said Poley, ‘we have a sailor on our list true enough. And a fox-haired one at that.’ He stirred the hairs spread across the white paper sheet once more.
‘But none of your watchers saw him coming or going,’ said Tom.
‘That doesn’t mean he wasn’t there,’ said Ugo.
‘But if he was there in secret, he might well have a powerful motive to murder anyone who discovered him.’
‘Depending on why he wanted his visits to be kept secret,’ said Will. ‘What damage could the opening of the secret do? That he was having his birth chart drawn and his future predicted? Why he’d be one among hundreds. That he wanted a love philtre or token - such as the lock of hair curled here? Again, one amongst many. Almost any of Forman’s occult practices in the way of showing or controlling the future might embarrass a man if known - but hardly do him damage enough to merit murder as a response.’
‘Unless,’ said Tom, ‘Forman’s lodging was not being used as a place of magic. What if the most important room in the place was not the shop, the laboratorium, the library or the occult chamber. What if the important room was the bedroom? All the men on our list are happily married. Their reputation and standing at court depends upon it for the Queen’s disapproval of secret liaisons has led to the Tower in the past and may well do so again. The Tower followed by years in the wilderness of royal disapproval and exile from court. If Spenser somehow discovered one of our suspects in flagrante or nearly so, that might well make a man fear utter ruin if it came to the Queen’s ears. Make him so worried that the only way forward might be murder.’
Tom paused and there was a moment of silence as the others digested his words, testing their logic and probability.
The silence was broken by a choking yowl and they all turned to look at Astaroth. She was dancing wildly in place, her one eye a black gape with the finest green edge around it. Suddenly she lost control of her bladder and flooded the old cloak with urine.
Tom reached over and caught Rosalind’s wrist, stopping her first spoonful of lamprey pie half way to her lips. He glanced round the table - everyone else was still on the venison pie with no ill effects. Only Astaroth had eaten the fish.
‘There’s hemlock in the lamprey pie,’ he said.
Chapter 17: The Doubting Thomas
i
‘Lord Robert suspected that it would be Sir Thomas,’ said Poley as he, Will and Tom walked briskly out of Blackfriars, heading for London Bridge. ‘But his logic was not of the strongest.’
‘What argument did he employ?’ asked Will.
‘That Sir Thomas did not feature anywhere on the lists of suspects,’ Poley explained. ‘That he appeared to be absolutely innocent.’
‘Therefore it could be argued he had been so careful to keep himself free of suspicion that its very absence was in itself suspicious?’ asked Tom.
‘Just so.’
‘Only a man who studied law at the Sorbonne could chop logic like that! And, now I think of it, the same reasoning could be applied to Master Secretary himself - not only has he ensured that his name is kept we
ll clear of this situation, he has even arranged for one of his most trusted lieutenants and intelligencers to be involved in every likely aspect of the case either as Chief Intelligencer or Pursuivant Marshal. It’s a situation with guilt written all over it; yours as well as his.’
‘Most amusing!’ said Poley. ‘But you both know the guilty man must be Walter Raleigh.’
‘I do,’ said Tom. ‘Sir Walter must stand at the heart of the matter at least.’
Will frowned, trying to work out the other men’s logic.
‘Or rather it seemed so until Sir Thomas Walsingham started sending you poisoned pies,’ said Poley thoughtfully.
‘It seems so still. I fear the poisoned pie simply confirms matters,’ replied Tom grimly.
‘How so?’ demanded Will but there was no reply.
The three of them were hurrying down Water Lane but instead of hailing a wherry Eastward Ho! Tom chose to turn left and follow the River. They walked along White Lion Hill into Paul’s Walk, then up by Broken Wharf to High Timber and along Upper Thames Street to Fish Street then down onto the Bridge.
It was a brisk walk of twenty minutes through a clear, frosty evening and they soon became too short of breath for conversation so they each dwelt on their own thoughts as they shouldered through the bustle, leaving great clouds of breath behind them as though they were all smoking pipes of Sir Walter’s new-fangled medicinal tobacco.
On their right for much of the time, the River also bustled with shipping of all sorts from the wherries they decided not to hire to the tall ocean-going galleons which had sailed past London Bridge at the turn of low-tide while the drawbridges were raised and the incoming surge was beginning to push upriver behind them. The tide was full at the moment, and just beginning to turn once more, so that, as they came down Fish Street, they felt as much as heard the great rumbling as the massive water wheels between the northernmost starlings of the Bridge began to turn and the Thames started to form that six-foot cliff of water beneath the Bridge itself that Rosalind so wanted to ride.
*
The massive edifice of Nonsuch, prefabricated in Holland and shipped here to be reassembled piece by piece, straddled the bridge half way along its length. The central roadway led beneath its great arch, with access into the house from either side. The rear of the great building faced north and the front faced south. To the north, other houses and shops crowded close behind it but to the south, facing the South Wark, the Great South Gateway and the church of St Mary Overie beyond it, there was a broad expanse that included one of the drawbridges and so was clear of shops. The house stood near twelve stories to the great onion cupolas above its four square towers. Although the house itself - erected here using only wooden pins to hold the whole together - reached from one edge of the bridge to the other, there were added sections on each side overhanging the river that contained the privies which served the house’s occupants and their numerous servants. Though, like the public privies to the north and the south of them, they were little more than long rooms containing holes cut into stout boards raised knee-high that reached out conveniently over the water. They made excellent fishing-holes when not employed in their primary purpose, for hungry fish congregated here awaiting the food that rained from on high. Whereas the public facilities were open, those in Nonsuch were enclosed, with tall windows looking up-stream and down-stream behind the seated occupants’ shoulders.
Tom, Will and Poley stopped beneath the Nonsuch arch and rapped on the door that led into the massive building. A footman answered at once and even as he ushered them in, taking their cloaks as he did so, Sir Thomas’ butler Bates appeared. ‘Is it Sir Thomas, Lady Audrey or Mistress Kate you wish to see, Master Musgrave?’ asked Bates. ‘They are all at home, I believe.’
Although he spoke to Tom as a familiar visitor and nodded to Will as an occasional guest, his wise eyes were taking the measure of Poley who was standing at Tom’s side. Tom began to wonder whether his companion was also a regular - clandestine - visitor.
‘We are here to see Sir Thomas, to begin with at least, thankyou Bates,’ said Tom.
‘Very well, sir. If you would follow me…’ Bates led them deeper into the house at bridge level, to the stairs leading up above the stories filled by the household servants, brewers, butchers, mongers, cooks and cleaners. Then, a little laboriously further up storey after storey until they reached the lower family apartments. Here, where the floor reached from side to side of the house well above the arch, there was a strange sensation of space, as though they were entering the Royal palaces of West Minster, Hampton Court or Greenwich. Or, thought Tom, remembering more recent experiences, the Royal chambers in the Tower - the Queen’s fourth London palace.
Sir Thomas met them in his study, the book-lined sanctum whose one tall window overlooked the River downstream almost as far as Deptford, a vista of maritime activity that matched the bustle on London’s streets. As the tide was beginning to fall and the current of the mighty river was following the withdrawal of the water out towards the sea, many of the vessels in the anchorages of Deptford and Greenwich were getting ready to sail, though one or two - for whatever reason - were doggedly beating upriver against wind, tide and current.
Sir Thomas’ study was where he retired in the evenings - when not at Parliament in West Minster - to do his business, meet his responsibilities as MP for Rochester in Kent and oversee his extensive network of spies. Because of the latter - thought Tom - he had no difficulty in recognising Robert Poley, regular visitor or not.
ii
Looking at Sir Thomas before they began to explain their presence and mission, Tom was struck by several facts that he had never really noticed before. To begin with, Sir Thomas shared much of his physical make-up as well as his mental acuity with his close relative the late spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s dark-hued Moor, rather than with his bluff landowner father Sir Thomas after whom he had been named. Not yet forty years old, this Sir Thomas was a lean, dark-haired man whose pointed beard and swept-back hair framed a long, intelligent face as smoothly as an otter’s pelt. But Tom noticed for the first time how strong the reddish tinge in those sleek dark locks appeared to be. Which, he wryly thought, explained the fact that Sir Thomas could be every bit as quick-tempered and unforgiving as his red-haired sister-in-law.
For a disturbing instant he wondered whether Sir Robert Cecil’s French chopped logic as presented by Poley might have some merit after all and Sir Thomas rather than Sir Walter somehow stood at the heart of this.
‘Well, gentlemen, how can I be of service?’ Sir Thomas asked, moving his papers aside so that he could give them his full attention.
‘Sir Thomas, did you send a lamprey pie as a gift to Blackfriars tonight?’ asked Tom.
‘Not to my knowledge. We did in fact have lamprey pie this evening and very fine it was, but you would have to ask Audrey, the butler or the cook whether there was more than one made and whether the extra one was sent to you. Or, I suppose, you could ask the men who brought it to you - for I imagine it did not arrive at Blackfriars by its own occult motion. But it must have been especially tasty to have called you, Master Shakespeare and Master Poley right across London to show your gratitude.’
‘That is not quite our intention, Sir Thomas,’ said Poley.
‘What brings you to my door then?’ wondered Sir Thomas.
‘Perhaps if we could talk to Lady Audrey as you suggest,’ said Tom, who was in no rush to give anything much away. Despite his ironic conversation with Poley, he actually thought that Sir Thomas was innocent of any wrongdoing, for he still believed the guilty man really was Raleigh, but even so, a cautious approach could do no harm - especially as an open accusation could all too easily lead to confrontation and ejection from Nonsuch with the enquiry only part-done. For it was vital to his mind that he establish how the poison in the pie - if it originated with Raleigh’s associate Forman like all the other hemlock in the case so far - got from Billingsgate to Blackfriars in th
e guts of that lamprey pie.
Sir Thomas nodded and picked up a bell from his desk. It made a piercing, silvery jingle as he shook it and even before the echoing tintinnabulation died, Bates was back in the doorway, waiting for his master’s instructions.
‘Ah, Bates. Would you see whether my wife is free to grant us a moment or two of her time?’
‘Of course, Sir Thomas.’
Moments later he returned and ushered in his mistress. Lady Audrey Walsingham was an older version of her sister Kate. The difference in their ages added several subtle strengths to Audrey. Physically, she was slightly fuller of figure, but she carried herself almost like a queen while something of the tom-boy still lingered in Kate. Audrey’s hair was darker than Kate’s flame-red, almost the colour of autumn leaves. Like her husband’s it contained no trace of grey as yet. Likewise her eyes had less of the emerald and more of moss-green about them. Her nose and lips were straighter and thinner than Kate’s and, although her chin was determined, there was no dimple, as there was with Kate’s. When she smiled, however - which she did often - there were dimples in her cheeks just as there were in Kate’s as well. Her voice when she spoke was quiet but carrying and several tones deeper than Kate’s.
*
‘Good evening Tom, this is a pleasant surprise. Master Shakespeare and Master Poley - to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?’ her tone and demeanour made it clear that this was a woman well-used to walking and talking with royalty. But she had always had a soft spot for Tom - partially but not entirely because of his steadying influence on her wildcat of a sister.
‘They have come across London from Blackfriars to say gramercy for a lamprey pie which we sent them earlier this evening,’ explained Sir Thomas.