Low Treason

by Leonard Tourney

  For, to Cecil, James was the only logical successor, despite his unprepossessing figure and the tedious pedantry Cecil had taken pains to indulge in his letters to him. James was Elizabeth’s choice as well. He was a Protestant and a man, and even Elizabeth did not want another woman to wear the crown. There were other candidates, of course, but they could not be taken seriously. Lady Arabella Stuart, a descendant of the elder daughter of Henry VII, was a weak-willed insignificant woman with little or no support among the nobility and less among the commons. Lord Beauchamp, the eldest son of the house of Seymour, posed even less a threat. His legitimacy was questionable and his claim rested entirely on an obscure provision in the will of Henry VIII. Now, after fifty years, who cared? Then there was the unthinkable—the Infanta Isabella of Spain. Although strongly favored by the radical Catholics, her succession would mean not only capitulation to England’s worst enemy but the destruction of the English Church.

  No, Isabella was unthinkable.

  That left James.

  Cecil signed the letter with a bold flourish, using the code name he and James had agreed upon, and then sealed it. As he did so he remembered Matthew Stock’s visit of the previous day.

  Blackmail—a dastardly practice, not unknown, however, in the court despite Elizabeth’s strict probity and supervision. Cecil thought of Joan Stock’s clever forgery and marveled again. Mrs. Stock was a damnably clever woman for a clothier’s wife. Her device had shown all the right instincts. A widower of some half-dozen years, Cecil had often been accused of unchastity by his enemies and the letter was all the more fit for its plausibility. Cecil was a man of power and power attracted women. But the truth was that although he was not naturally celibate, few women attracted him now. A casual flirtation perhaps, with some gentleman’s wife, discreetly carried on and platonic, but he abstained from brothels and the looser women about the court, those who invited seduction with their bare bosoms and bold stares, their simpering and mewing. Besides, politics, like an unsatiable mistress, tended to drain his energies. He understood well that love was what one sacrificed at the altar of greatness.

  He placed the letter in a leather pouch and rang for one of his secretaries. Then, as though he had been waiting all morning for his signal, a callow young man named John Beauclerk, whom Cecil had recently appointed to this office, entered and stood before his master expectantly. Cecil delivered the pouch to him, and Beauclerk took it. James would have the letter by the end of the week if the weather held and the courier managed to avoid the thieves and brigands that plagued the north country roads.

  Toward noon, just as Cecil finished the last draft of a long report touching upon the dangers of Jesuit conspiracies, Beauclerk came again with the day’s mail. As usual it consisted of a good many pieces, for Cecil maintained a large correspondence. He dismissed Beauclerk and then glanced through the pack, selecting some to read at once. As he did this, one letter in particular caught his attention because it was oddly addressed—to Robin Cecil.

  Robin? A few intimates called him that, sometimes the Queen in a jocular mood, more often his enemies. Sensitive to the insolence of the address, he broke the seal and found inside two letters. One was written in a fine hand. This he read first. It was a mere fragment beginning in midsentence and ending likewise, like a snatch of conversation overheard as one passed from one room to the next. A phrase caught his eye: Sweet Robin hath promised advancement and cometh daily to the house when Henry lieth abroad.

  Do I? thought Cecil with quiet amusement. He was relieved that Joan Stock had not been too specific as to just what advancement he had promised. He would leave that to Castell’s imagination. What was at issue then was not merely Cecil’s alleged adultery, but the sale of office. That was a serious business indeed.

  He read the fragment through. The rest was in the same vein as the first, the style direct and lusterless, which made its composition by a foolish, semiliterate woman (not Joan, but the poor hapless wench she had invented) all the more probable. The effort at discretion was a total failure. The fact of the adulterous liaison was as obvious as the price of the woman’s virtue, a promotion to some lucrative office for her poor cuckold of a husband.

  The other letter was scrawled on foolscap, wretchedly penned as though it had been done by a scrivener or, more likely, his apprentice, eager to demonstrate legibility rather than art. It read:

  Right Honorable,

  I have come by this letter, a piece of which you shall find enclosed, in the street and have copied it with pains. None hath set eyes upon it but I, who am most anxious to deliver the whole of it to you again, since in perusing the contents thereof I find much that would compromise your high and mighty station. Your honor, the expectation of your friends, the trust of the Queen, are all at stake in this.

  Yet if you were to stroll in Paul’s Yard and linger before the bookstall of P. Winter, inquiring there for a copy of Tacitus, bound in buff leather somewhat worn, you might find therein a strong hope of recovery.

  The letter was unsigned, as he had expected. He put it down on his desk and examined the enclosed fragment again, feeling the texture of the paper between his thumb and forefinger, while he contemplated what he should do. He had enough evidence now to move against the jeweler. What remained to be discovered—the full scope of Castell’s stratagem and its purpose—might be wrung from the man by threats or torture. In a civil matter something more circumstantial would have been required, but when treason was abroad one was driven to take extraordinary measures.

  He was about to call for Beauclerk and set in motion the arrest when he suddenly changed his mind. Why should he act precipitously? This was an intrigue of the sort with which, if anything, he was overly familiar, but always before as a detached observer, never as a direct participant. That was the daily work of his undercover agents— clandestine meetings, cryptic messages, artful disguises. Had one of his agents been involved to the degree Cecil was now, the First Secretary would never have preempted the game with an official arrest. He would have let the agent play on and catch the plotter somewhere further along when the plot and its end were in plain sight. Why should he lose the opportunity now? Besides, there was something about this business that appealed to his sense of adventure, his gambler’s instinct. He would show Castell he was the cleverer. Cecil thought a walk in Paul’s might be refreshing after the long morning at his desk. Outdoors it was a fine summer day and, besides, he had always admired Tacitus.

  By two o’clock he was in his coach and being driven toward the City, secure in the visible invisibility the coach afforded. It was a magnificent vehicle, the coach, very well designed and crafted, capacious and elegant with its team of six horses, its two drivers and two footmen in livery and its doors blazoned with the Cecil crest. It had cost him a fortune and had aroused much admiration and envy in the court. Ordinarily, on such a pleasant afternoon, he would have enjoyed a leisurely drive through London. Today, however, his impatience undermined his pleasure. How slowly the coach moved through the crowded streets, and yet for all his eagerness to get to Paul’s and the bookseller’s, when he peered from the window to view the city he loved he experienced a surge of patriotic feeling. He had traveled widely. He had visited the courts of European princes and viewed the great churches of Christendom. But for him there was no city to be compared with this. In its diversity and richness, it was the whole world epitomized. Its citizens were the finest; its churches the purest; its court all courts, made more splendid by its compression. All this Castell and his fellow conspirators threatened. Just how he had yet to discover. But whatever the plot, Cecil knew he must uncover it. It all depended upon him, and realizing that, he suddenly saw himself in heroic perspective, meet to stand with other defenders of the faith who had kept England free. Would he not be worthy to receive as they had received?

  Cecil counted on being made an earl at least or duke.

  When he arrived he left the coach on a side street and approached Paul’s Yard from the west o
n foot. He found P. Winter’s bookstall very quickly. The books were set out upon a table under a crimson canopy and the fastidious eyes of a stocky, robust-looking man dressed in a shabby black suit. Cecil himself had dressed plainly for the occasion. He had left his great chain of office at home and wore instead a dark gray doublet, silk hose of the same solemn color, and short cape of any ordinary knight. Yet though in the throng of Paul’s Yard no one approached him begging for a handout, he was aware of the studious regard of those about him. All this he had come to expect as his due, and as he pretended to be absorbed in the general scene he realized the futility of his disguise. His crooked back and splayed feet went before him like a herald and trumpeter.

  The bookseller had seen him coming. He rushed forward, hat in his hand, greeting Cecil by name. The handful of other customers drew aside respectfully. Cecil smiled an austere smile of acknowledgment. But of course the bookseller would recognize him at once. If he were part of the conspiracy he would have been waiting all morning.

  Cecil glanced cursorily over the book table. Everything was in great disorder, greasy with handling; the covers of many of the books were tattered as though they had been exposed to the weather. Penny broadsides and pamphlets were heaped in stacks with stones on top to keep them from flying off. Learned tomes and collections of sermons rubbed shoulders with jestbooks and travelers’ tales.

  “I have your book, Sir Robert.” The bookseller rushed away to another table. In an instant he was back again, book in hand and grinning wolfishly. The man had large protruding teeth. Several were missing. His breath stank like the Thames at low tide and Cecil recoiled with disgust.

  “Tacitus,” said the bookseller.

  “Tacitus?” murmured Cecil, as though the Roman author were the furthest thing from his thoughts.

  “Comes one—a gentleman—this very morning with the book. He said you’d call for it today and I was to give it to you.”

  Cecil examined the book. The buff leather cover had been slightly stained with water and one comer looked as though it had been chewed. He wondered why the blackmailer had chosen this particular book as vehicle for his next message and wished very much to peruse it at once. But that must wait until he was alone.

  “What manner of man was this?”

  “Sir?”

  “He who told you to give the book to me?”

  “As I said, a gentleman. He didn’t mention his name. He said only that you would come for the book and I should give it to you.”

  The bookseller’s face was round and florid, his eyes close-set like a bird’s; his full lips and heavy chin gave the impression that the top and bottom of his face belonged to two different men. Yet although it was not an intelligent countenance there was that about it Cecil would have called honest. Cecil decided that the bookseller was not himself a conspirator. He asked him to describe the gentleman in question in more detail.

  “Of middling height, running to tall. Head and face square. Eyes wide apart.”

  The bookseller could not remember the color of the eyes or of the hair, or whether the man was thin or heavy. His description of the man’s clothing was muddled, but he remembered that whatever the man wore it was of good quality.

  “Well, I think I know the gentleman,” said Cecil, taking the book.

  Cecil drew his purse from his belt, opened it, and plumbed it for a coin. He handed the money to the bookseller.

  “For your pains,” he said.

  The bookseller, obviously made nervous by his august patron, thanked Cecil and bowed awkwardly. “May I show you something more?”

  He searched anxiously among the store of volumes and withdrew a large one, in better condition than most. “This book of poems by Mr. Spenser. Faerie Queene, it is named. These are the second three books, most suitably dedicated to Her Majesty and much approved by the gentlemen of the city. ’ ’

  Cecil frowned and shook his head impatiently. He already owned a copy of the work. His father had been the subject of one of Spenser’s commendatory verses. Cecil knew the lines by heart. They had compared Burghley to Atlas, bearing the burden of government on his shoulders. Now the burden was Robert Cecil’s own; it would be greater still when the Queen was dead.

  He tucked the Tacitus beneath his arm, thanked the bookseller, and turned into the crowd. A little circle of onlookers had formed to watch the transaction. Now that it was concluded they quickly dispersed and made a path for him, gawking at him. He might have been a trained monkey dancing upon a string, or a savage brought from the Americas. He looked at the faces as he passed. Some of the eyes were merely curious, others suspicious. One of the faces was undoubtedly the blackmailer’s—or perhaps one of his confederates—waiting to see if Cecil would follow instructions.

  He walked straight across the yard, the cynosure of eyes. When he came to where he had left his coach, the two liveried footmen roused from their stupor and stood by, one to hold the door open, the other to hold his arm as he ascended into its comfortable interior.

  Inside, Cecil pulled the velvet drapes across the window and began to examine the book; he held it by its covers and shook it until a small piece of yellow paper fluttered into his lap. Its message was brief: St. Michael’s Comhill. Eight o ’clock tonight. Alone.

  “You will be pleased to learn, Count, that the great little manikin has come up to the bait.”

  Castell didn’t say that to Ortega; he said it beneath his breath and to himself as he mused on the next step in his stratagem. He was in his house in Barbican Street, and the day was waning with the painful slowness of a tiresome conversation that shows no prospect of ending. Ortega would have called him a madman and complained to Spain about the perverse recklessness of their English agent were he to know just how dangerous an interview the jeweler contemplated at the moment. But the Spaniard was a timid soul, and he would sing a different tune when Castell had Cecil where he wanted him, tucked away securely in some compromising agreement with England’s enemies.

  The clock struck seven; the summer evening mellowed and cooled, and from his window Castell looked out over the back parts of his house and inhaled the heavy fragrance of vegetation run riot. Thinking of Cecil again. Cecil, Cecil, Cecil. The man had never deigned to enter the jeweler’s shop, but of course Castell had seen him many times: in the Strand, in Paul’s, at other fashionable resorts. Wherever the man appeared now he stirred men’s hearts, gathered their attention, as though the pygmy were a king.

  Castell wondered that the old Queen could tolerate such a fellow, maugre his honors, most of which he owed to the influence of his father. What a fine thing it was to have a well-heeled, well-allowed father, upon whose graces one could rise easily into royal estimation.

  The shadows of the houses and trees lengthened solemnly. Before his glass, Castell put on a large, floppy hat that concealed most of his face, an old leather jerkin and loose-fitting breeches so that he looked like a carpenter or stonemason. He regarded his own image with curious detachment. The humble clothes had quite transformed him, made him a stranger to himself. The creature reflected was poor, downtrodden, therefore practically invisible, and invisibility was exactly what he wanted.

  He began to review his plans with the cool deliberation of one who knows he must not err. This was to be the most daring of his plots, and despite his contempt for Ortega’s timorousness he had taken the Spaniard’s warning seriously, and made elaborate arrangements for his own safety. He had stationed his spies around the church to signal alarm if anyone but Cecil approached, planned his avenues of escape should his spies fail him. He had provided witnesses for the interview with the First Secretary, and conceived of a plan to keep his own identity concealed—from Cecil and the witnesses. He had planned for every contingency: should Cecil come with a troop of guards, or should he not come at all.

  He went downstairs, where he found Starkey and Perryman playing cards in the hall. They were dressed as he, in laborers’ garb. He beckoned them to follow, and the three men went out t
he back door, through the garden, and into the alley. Anyone seeing them now, arms linked, singing, would think them simple fellows homeward bound, perhaps a little drunk. Boon companions, the three of them.

  The parish church of St. Michael the Archangel was in the Comhill ward, not far from the Royal Exchange. It was an old church and had once been fair, but now its appearance was blemished by the construction of lower tenements immediately to the north, which had left the church dark and uninviting.

  At dusk, Cecil came alone as directed. Between that afternoon and the present moment he had had his second thoughts, as might any man. What if the blackmailer’s motive were assassination, the meeting a reason to get Cecil into an obscure place, fit for murder? His going would be a great gamble. Yet, he considered, he could, after all, be murdered anytime. The Queen herself had been the victim of any number of attempts on her life, and she had survived them. So might he.

  He had come on horseback and he tied the black gelding that was his favorite mount to a post outside the iron gate surrounding the churchyard. Then he waited. Inside the yard he could see the scaffolding rising against the north wall. Repair work, proceeding very slowly. Soon some stonemasons bearing a chest passed through the gate. They did not look at him, an obscure figure now in the fading light. A few more stragglers departed—an old woman in her shawl, several clerics with their books. Last the sexton came to close the gate and then return to his cottage within the church grounds.

  Now the setting sun bathed the church in a rosy hue, illuminating the western windows as though the interior of the church were afire. A holy conflagration, thought Cecil, not a little awed by the spectacle. St. Michael’s Church. The Archangel. The Final Conflict. Was this the apocalyptic irony of a madman, Cecil wondered, or the symbolism of a traitor more clever and dangerous than he had supposed? But the illumination was brief. The intensity of color faded and the church became gray and flat against the darkening sky, like a great mound of earth or a rock thrust up from the sea.