Low Treason

by Leonard Tourney

  “Yes,” replied Castell. “It seemed simple enough stuff. I thought it likely these letters contained more than accounts of Spanish weather and the price of sherry, but what was that to me? I had no love for England, less for Spain. I was of the mind to take any man’s coin offered me. But I was a curious fellow, though no longer young, and I took to opening the packets and perusing the letters at my leisure. The most seemed innocent enough—what

  one would have expected. Full of trivia—the news of court, weather, well-wishing, a deal of Roman moralizing stolen from Hilly or one of his apes, or unctuous counsel to console some Christian fool. Save one or two of these, which were so garbled in their sense I knew at once they must be ciphers. This they proved to be, I deciphered them, and they spoke to me as clearly as you cold sober would command your servant to fetch your supper. ’ ’

  “What did the letters contain?”

  “Those that traveled to England put certain questions. Some of these regarded ship movements, men, and munitions, inquired about court intrigues, the whereabouts of certain Jesuit priests and so forth; those that traveled to Spain answered back again.”

  “How long did you do this?”

  Castell frowned thoughtfully and said, “A year, perhaps two.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “One day when I had come fresh from my travels the duke drew me to him. He said he had become quite fond of me. He told me he knew I had myself become familiar with the letters I bore and complimented me on my wisdom. A man who will carry an unopened letter for another—knowing not whether it may do him ill or good— is a fool, he said. Now, said he, you know which way the wind blows?”

  “What did he mean by that?” Matthew asked, and then regretted it, for he remembered that this was Cecil’s business and that it was his duty to keep silent. But Cecil did not seem to mind the interruption. The knight said nothing, his face intent still on the man in the chair.

  “Why, the plot. He meant I knew the plot. The Spanish were gathering intelligence. Of all kinds. Specifically about English ships, about fortifications, especially along the coast. This was in the year of eighty-seven.”

  “The year before the great Armada,” said Cecil. “Indeed. That was the plot. The Spanish were preparing the way for the invasion.”

  “But the invasion failed. The Armada was scattered and destroyed.”

  “Indeed, it was, but the failure was not due to a want of knowledge of English affairs.”

  “So, then, your plotting came to nothing,” murmured Cecil, looking at the jeweler with great contempt.

  “For the moment. The duke died—of disappointment, I think, because of the defeat. I was out of employment again. I traveled with the money I had put by to Italy and then to Greece, but soon grew weary of that and came at last to Spain again where I lived in quiet retirement for the next few years. Then, about ninety-four or -five I was approached again by the Spanish. My services had not been forgotten. The old Spanish King, though infirm, had retained his ambitions to conquer England. He wanted to try again.”

  “Another Armada?”

  “Yes.”

  “Philip took you into his service?”

  “His agents did. I never had the pleasure of conversing with His Highness. I suppose that would have been beneath him.” Castell said this bitterly. “During my years in Spain I had amassed a fine collection of gems and jewels. I became knowledgeable in the trade. Philip’s agents gave me a considerable sum to come to London and begin a business. That, said he, would put me in the very middle of English affairs. I had retained my old contacts, of course. It was not a month before I was conveying intelligence to Spain again.”

  “You had no qualms about betraying your country? You are not even a Catholic,” said Cecil.

  “I have neither country nor religion. The one was taken from me as a child, the other—well, that was so much nonsense to my mind.”

  “What did you hope to obtain in blackmailing me?” asked Cecil.

  Castell laughed. “Oh, you’re puzzled by that? Well, the Spanish were often puzzled as well. I mean about my . . . clients. The Spaniards were concerned about military intelligence-information about ships, troops, alliances abroad, plots and counterplots at home. I pleased them in that. In time, however, any information would do for me, so long as it was some unsavory stuff the revelation of which would torment the man. I cared not a groat about statecraft. What was that to me? I found me men such as yourself—wellborn, smug, contemptuous—”

  ‘‘Cur, you go too far,” Cecil snapped, his eyes ablaze with anger. He struck the jeweler on the side of the face. Castell flinched but quickly resumed his expression of stoical fortitude.

  ‘‘I beg your pardon, Sir Robert,” Castell said, ‘‘but a man speaking the truth should be allowed some tolerance. All men are sinners. You want the truth of my history, do you not?”

  ‘‘Continue.”

  ‘‘Well then, I enjoyed their squirming, delighted in seeing them beg. No man ever left the back room of my shop quite as tall as he entered. I whittled them all down until their pride was lost amidst the shavings. Killing them would not have given me so much pleasure.”

  “You wanted to humiliate me, then?” asked Cecil, very coldly.

  Castell laughed a low, humorless laugh. “My employers were often mystified as well, but they were too satisfied with the intelligence I conveyed to complain. They were fools with their dreams of conquest, as though stealing a country gives one-tenth of the satisfaction of stealing a man’s pride, puncturing the great swollen bladder of his vanity.”

  “So you made the Spanish King your fool.”

  “Yes, yes. For them my spying was a means to their end, to me it became the end. I cared nothing for their Armadas, their religion. It meant not a damn thing to me.” “But what of this new Armada? That old Philip persisted in his dream of conquest I can well believe, but his son has, since his reign commenced, been more temperate.”

  “Indeed he has, but he has those about him who wish he were made of sterner stuff.”

  “When was the invasion to take place?”

  “They wait for the Queen’s death. The confusion to follow coupled by my long undermining of certain key

  persons was to give them the advantage. Fewer ships were to be used. We are speaking of no great fleet, but of a smaller force, directed at London, slipping between the folds of England’s mourning garment before she knows who has struck or why. The Infanta was to be proclaimed Queen.”

  “Well, varlet, it won’t happen now,” cried Cecil with determination.

  Castell looked upward; his face was hard, full of bitterness and scorn. “Do you think I care? I have had what I wanted. I have had it for years. For each of my torments I have tormented. I have caused them all to suffer exquisitely. Take from me my head, divide my parts. Do what you will but you shall not take from me my satisfaction.”

  “Impious villain,” shouted Cecil, raising his arm to strike again. The arm hung in the air. Castell was smiling, chuckling beneath his breath. Cecil dropped his arm to his side in a gesture of futility.

  “I have others who will do this work,” he said.

  “I will say no more,” said Castell. The jeweler stared straight ahead. A glazed expression fell upon his countenance and he sat there as one contemplating a theme of infinite complexity. To Matthew it was clear that the interrogation had concluded. Castell would say no more.

  Cecil turned to Matthew. He spoke in a high, taut voice as though it was all he could do to confine his rage. “Come, Mr. Stock. Our time here has not been pleasant, but it has been well spent. We will leave this person to enjoy the last hours of his satisfaction as he calls it. He will straightway be carried to another place for trial where your word and the word of others will convict him of treason and sentence him to death.”

  Matthew followed Cecil to the door. Cecil called to the guard to let him out, and while they waited, Matthew turned to look at the solitary figure in the center of th
e room. He was sitting as fixed as a statue but he was no longer staring into space in bold defiance of his fate. He had shut his eyes and seemed as one asleep, as though his own tormented spirit had forsaken the body so soon to be hideously abused by the executioner. Matthew shuddered.

  With relief, he heard the guard’s footsteps outside the door and the key turning in the lock. Then the door opened, he cast a final look at the jeweler, and stepped out into the passage. As the door shut behind them and was locked again he heard the cry, hardly human, beginning deep and low like a growl and then rising and swelling until it became a shriek of blind terror.

  It had come from the chamber they had just left. It was Castell; it could have been no other. But Matthew could not associate this horrible sound with the smooth and calculating traitor and blackmailer who must still be seated alone there. It was horrible to think of.

  Cecil walked ahead as though he had heard nothing. The guards accompanying them seemed unperturbed as well. Was it Matthew’s imagination? He could hear nothing now, only the dripping of water on stone somewhere ahead of them, the tattoo of boots, the rustle of leather harnesses. Full of nameless dread, Matthew hurried to catch up with the others.

  “We have the jeweler’s book,” remarked Cecil casually as the knight’s coach rumbled to a stop before them.

  Matthew wanted to know what book Sir Robert meant. He was still shaken by the unearthly scream. The horses stamped impatiently on the wet pavement. It had begun to rain again, a cheerless drizzle that made the coach look freshly varnished.

  “The book in which he wrote the names, dates, and facts. It is a compendium of espionage. I have never seen anything like it. I doubt that Walsingham had, and he knew more of spies and spying than any man in Europe.”

  Matthew glanced at the book which the knight held in his hand. It was small and had a worn leather cover. He had often seen the like on the booksellers’ stalls.

  “What shall become of it?” he asked, more out of politeness than curiosity now.

  “It will be used as evidence at the trial, then destroyed. Castell’s was an evil work and this an evil book. Yes, we will destroy the book . . . when proper use has been made of it.”

  Cecil smiled absently as the last phrase fell from his 255

  lips and tucked the book beneath his belt. They climbed into the coach and the coach sped away. The window drapes were pulled. Matthew could no longer see the Tower and he was glad. He didn’t want to see it again. He had had his fill of prisons, of London and its treachery, its complicated motives and web of deceit. He wanted to return to Chelmsford and his shop, to his wife and daughter and her child, his first grandchild, and the sooner the better.

  “Was the jeweler really the king’s son?” Matthew asked.

  Cecil laughed heartily. “Most unlikely. Though Henry might have wished it so, it would have taken a greater miracle than that worked upon Abraham and Sarah to quicken the old king’s loins. He was unable, syphilitic. The jeweler dreams, Mr. Stock, he only dreams.”

  Fifteen

  IT was early evening in the week following and they were all gathered at the table in Elizabeth’s spacious kitchen; supper was nearly done. Through the windows that William had newly glazed the motes of dust floated in a flood of waning sunlight like little ships upon a stream.

  “This is all very pleasant, our being here together again,” Joan said.

  “Marry, that’s God’s truth!” cried Matthew between mouthfuls, for only he continued to eat. He had picked at the bones of the fowl until they were white and glistening. Grinning, he leaned forward, planting his forearms on the table between the wooden cups and pewter plates and said: “I’ll have just a bit more of that bird, if it please you, Elizabeth.”

  Plump and happy in the fading light, Elizabeth rose from the table to carve for her father, glancing at the same time to the comer where on a woollen coverlet her newborn son slept peacefully, undisturbed by the talk and clanking of pots and plates and the moving about of stools. Opposite Matthew and Joan, the brothers William and Thomas Ingram conversed about the farm.

  Presently Matthew announced that he had had his fill of the goose and made a great comical show of pushing back from the table. Everyone laughed, for Matthew’s appetite was ever the subject of their jibes, which he never failed to take in good humor. The baby woke and began to cry, and Elizabeth wiped her hands upon her apron and hurried to pick up her vociferous charge, cuddling him to her bosom, kissing him upon the face and crooning to him in a soft, musical voice. “He is hungry, too, poor babe. That’s what he complains of.”

  “And his grandfather here has left precious little to gnaw upon,” observed Joan good-naturedly.

  “Elizabeth will find something,” Matthew said with feigned defensiveness. “After all, I am not the only one here who is well fed this day. Look at William there, his nether lip is still besmirched with fat—and Thomas, Thomas Ingram, what devil possessed you to gluttonize at table? I am a witness against you. Come then, wife, kiss me as you must, for naught else will remedy the wrong your accusations have wrought.”

  “I, wrong you?” Joan cried, after yielding to her husband’s embrace and kissing him long and hard upon the mouth. “How so? Have I slandered that monstrous stomach of yours which even now presides over the ruin of Elizabeth’s goose? You are bold to blame your son-in-law and young Thomas for gluttony. Fie upon such hypocrisy! Why, look you now at those bones. You have left not a smidgen. And the plate before you, what Lenten fare is here! Now a churchmouse could not fetch a mouthful from your plate.”

  But their pleasant raillery had alarmed the child. He waved his little arms frantically,- his face was red, and Elizabeth, ever the careful mother, scolded them all for their light-mindedness.

  “Lightheardtedness, rather,” said Joan, growing serious now and not quite ready to take correction from her own child, even if she was a woman grown, an inch taller than she, and in her own house. “A light heart makes for a winsome countenance,” she reminded them all.

  “Mother, you are ever ready with your proverbs,” Elizabeth chided. “But forbear this merriment. My child is all in terror now that his grandfather has consumed the last bite on earth. Come then, child. Your mother will show you how well she has provided.”

  Outside the door was a well-tended kitchen garden, and beyond that a little copse. On a fair day Elizabeth resorted there, and sat beneath the trees in the soft grass, and looked out across the fields and woods beyond. It was to this place that she invited her company now, and they followed willingly, for the kitchen had grown overly warm and there was general agreement that the open air, a great stirrer of the appetite, was likewise a great aid in digestion once the feasting was done.

  They found places beneath the trees and watched while the sun contracted into a little fringe of gold on the horizon. Elizabeth nursed her child, and they talked of their lives, of the years to come, and the years that had passed. They begged Matthew to sing and he did, one song of his own composing, and when he had finished Thomas said, “How I shall miss this place when I am gone.”

  Joan turned toward his voice, for Thomas Ingram was but a shadow now. Was he leaving, then? She had not heard that. What of him she could discern was faced out over the land, the dark fields, the indistinct hedgerows. His jaw was set and she could not see the scar on his forehead, but she knew that it would never disappear, that Thomas would bear the mark of Starkey’s treachery to the grave.

  “Thomas has decided to leave us,” Elizabeth explained. “He has been a great help here, but we will not keep him if it is in his mind to seek his fortune elsewhere.”

  “You won’t go again to London, Thomas?” Joan asked, concerned.

  She heard him chuckle. He said, “Nay, I’ve had as much of London as the constable here has had of Elizabeth’s goose. This is William’s farm; there’s not enough room for the two of us.” William protested, but Thomas continued: “No, not enough room. Besides, I’m no farmer. I thought I’d go to Colchest
er. There, they say, are opportunities aplenty for strong young men. I am still of an age

  to apprentice myself, and William has agreed to pay my bond/’

  “As long as you don’t apprentice yourself to a jeweler,” said William, and everyone laughed, for they had all heard by this time of the Stocks’ adventures in London.

  When the laughter subsided Thomas said, “So my former employer is dead.”

  “I have seen his remains,” replied Matthew solemnly. “Stuck atop the bridge in London, like an apple upon a spear, ready for roasting. Now he looks down upon the very city he despised and would have betrayed.”

  “Had you not prevented him,” said William.

  “Had we not prevented him,” replied Matthew, meaning to include Joan.

  “Sir Robert Cecil deserves the greater credit for that,” Joan ventured modestly. “It was he who apprehended the man while Matthew and I were still in Newgate looking to be rescued from our false imprisonment. Sir Robert brought him to judgment posthaste, and saw to his execution.”

  “But,” said Thomas, “Sir Robert would hardly have done so much had you not alerted him to Castell’s treachery.”

  “Well now,” said Joan, “you, Thomas, alerted us. So why then might we not give you thanks for your part, for had you not gone off to London to serve as his apprentice, the jeweler’s plot may well have succeeded.”

  “Well,” said William, “whoever deserves the credit, the jeweler has gone to his reward, and let the Devil have him for all I care, for he wished this land and people ill enough.”

  They all agreed that Castell was a wicked man and then fell silent. There was not a breath of wind; they could smell the earth beneath them and overhead the stars were venturing forth more confidently. In the middle distance, the vague shadow of birds, slow to give up their diurnal courses, soared in the dusky air.

  “But why,” asked Thomas, “why did he do it?”

  “Castell?” said Matthew.

  “You said he was no Papist, no seeker of gain, no striver for a crown.”