by A D Swanston
Christopher had not forgotten, nor ever would. ‘I think of it often. All the more reason why I am unwilling to put you in the way of danger again.’
Katherine nodded. ‘Very well. A compromise. Let us sit and you tell me what you can. At least then I may be your sounding board. For now I ask no more.’
It was a slippery slope but Katherine Allington was not an easy woman to refuse. Choosing his words with care, Christopher told her what little he knew, playing down Isaac’s reaction to the counterfeit coin. There was nothing to be gained by alarming her unduly.
It did not take long and when Katherine returned to Wood Street she had promised to speak to no one, not even her aunt, about the matter. Christopher watched her go and wondered if he had been too easily persuaded. Again.
CHAPTER 4
Since taking up his position in the earl’s service in London, Christopher had worked to extend his network of agents. Now he had Isaac Cardoza and intelligencers in the Guildhall, in the livery companies, among the traders in the markets and the boatmen on the river.
In Roland Wetherby, now in the service of the earl who had lured him away from Thomas Heneage, he had a brave and perceptive ally, and, to Katherine’s oft-voiced displeasure, he had Ell Cole, upon whom he had come to rely more and more not only for the intelligence she extracted from her ‘gentlemen’ but also for acting as a conduit to other agents in the roughest wards of the city, just as Isaac did among the business community. If he wanted them all to know or do something he had only to tell Ell and Isaac. It saved him much time and trouble and Ell revelled in the role. ‘Not just a whore, now, am I, Dr Rad?’ she had boasted. ‘Proper intelligencer, aren’t I? Don’t know what you’d do without me.’
‘I do,’ he had replied. ‘I’d have an easier time with Mistress Allington. She won’t believe I’m not swiving you.’
Ell’s laugh was a chuckle that began somewhere deep in her throat and exploded with enough force to make her shoulders shake. ‘Can’t believe it myself, doctor. Here am I offering it to you for nothing and here’s you saying even that’s too much. Have I to give you a pound for it, is that it?’
‘Now there’s a thought. But my price would be a little higher. Say twenty pounds?’
‘Fuck off, Dr Rad. If I had twenty pounds I wouldn’t waste them on you. I’d buy a fine house in Southwark and never speak to another man. I might even become a witch and fill the house with cats. That’d keep the buggers away.’ Very few things frightened Ell Cole, even being thought a witch. Christopher remembered that exchange and that he had left her with a grin on his face.
Ell’s stew was in a narrow, unnamed alley off Cheapside, usually the busiest street in London but on such a bitter day almost deserted. Huddled into his heavy coat, his cap low on his head, Christopher hurried past the few traders who had braved the morning cold, and turned into the alley. When he came to this place he tried not to be noticed although, at over six feet tall and with hair the colour of hay, that was not easy. The alley was home to families of fat rats who fed off scraps from the market and the heaps of human waste lining it and to beggars and vagrants sheltering in dark doorways. He ignored their outstretched hands and plaintive pleas and fingered the hilt of the poniard that had saved his purse, and his life, more than once. Measured by the number of a man’s strides the alley was no distance from the Goldsmiths’ Hall; in every other way it might as well have been a thousand miles away.
The bloated stew owner opened the door, a long clay pipe in her hand. ‘It’s you, doctor,’ she croaked. ‘Ell’s free. Go up.’ As he had never asked for any other of her charges, she knew well enough whom he wanted although she would have been astonished if she had been told why. She simply assumed that Dr Rad was one of Ell’s devoted customers and had been spoilt for any other girl. In this he would not have been alone.
He climbed the rickety stairs and knocked on Ell’s door. ‘Bugger off, Grace,’ a voice called out. ‘I’ve had a hard night and I’m sore. That last one was a foul brute. Don’t want to see him again.’
Christopher ignored her and opened the door. A fire was burning in the grate. Ell’s customers would not suffer the cold in her chamber. She was sitting up in bed, naked from the waist up, brushing her auburn hair. How a hard-working whore could look so lovely, even after a busy night’s work – oval face, brown eyes, a touch of red to her cheeks – he could not imagine. Only the faintest creases around the eyes betrayed her age, not that either of them had much idea what that was. Why she was not the pampered mistress of some pampered courtier he had never understood.
‘Oh, it’s you, Dr Rad.’ She grinned at him. ‘Any other time and it’d be a pleasure but I wouldn’t be myself this morning. One after another it was from dusk till dawn. I need my sleep.’ He laughed. She knew that it would be business not pleasure that had brought him there. She put down the hairbrush and pulled on a shift. ‘Don’t know why I’m hiding them from you.’
‘No need, Ell, if you don’t want to. Quite happy to look at them. And you shall have your sleep. Any gossip worth reporting to the earl?’
She shook her head. ‘Just the usual. A Spanish spy around every corner, a priest in every cellar, the queen on her death bed, the earl himself found swiving a sheep.’
‘What?’
This time, Ell’s laugh was like a child’s gurgle. ‘Just my little joke, doctor. Though since the queen pushed him out of her bed, they say he’ll swive almost anything.’
‘Nothing new, then?’
‘Not that’s reached my ears.’ She tilted her head to look at him. ‘You are unsettled, Dr Rad. Your face is drawn. Still the dreams?’
‘Still the dreams. And I saw a witch burned at Smithfield two days since.’
Ell snorted. ‘She wasn’t no witch. I knew her. Just an old widow with marks on her skin. She wouldn’t have hurt anyone. It was her man deserved to burn. Evil bugger he was. She was just a miserable old crone, stuck with a one-eyed scroyle for a husband.’
‘Hmm. These days it seems that every miserable old crone has made a pact with the devil. Or so we are to believe. Are you sure you’ve heard nothing?’
‘Not a rat’s fart.’
‘Well, keep your ears open, Ell, and look out for strange testons. Let me know if you see any or hear anything.’
‘What sort of strange? More red than silver? We’re used to those.’
‘No. Testons marked with a bear and a staff. But keep it to yourself.’
‘A bear and a staff. That’s different. Reckon I’d notice one of those. Very well, doctor. And you know me. Open door, open ears, open legs, mouth closed. I’ll slip a note under your door if I hear anything, then you’ll know to visit again.’ She smiled. ‘Take care, Dr Rad, and remember I’m here if you need me.’
‘I’ll remember. And you take care, too, Ell. There’s likely more to this than just a false coin.’
For all its stinking filth, Christopher had come to love the Thames. As different to the Cam that flowed quietly through Cambridge as a nettle to a rose, it was a busy, bustling highway, on which men and women lived and travelled and went about their business. On still days, their voices carried clearly across the water, many in languages he could not guess at. Here a man might see on the same day a black African face, a narrow-eyed oriental one, a face burned by the Mediterranean sun and the pale skin of the Baltic. He often wished that he could converse with each in his own tongue, ask them where they had travelled from, how they lived and what they thought. The Thames carried not only goods to be traded but knowledge and ideas to be exchanged.
From Cheapside he walked down to Blackfriars steps where he found two moored boats and three wherrymen braving the cold and awaiting a fare. Most wherrymen were affable souls, given to chatter and gossip and not short of an opinion. These three were huddled over a game of dice.
Both banks of the river as far as he could see towards London Bridge were lined with tilt-boats, barges and cargo vessels at anchor or at work. Between them the curr
ent bore its detritus out to sea. He sometimes wondered where it all went. Ell thought it washed up in France where the barbarous French ate what they could and fed the rest to their beasts. Rather unkindly he had not tried to dissuade her from this opinion.
One of the men looked up. ‘Across to Bankside, sir?’ he called out as Christopher approached.
‘Not today. Tower steps.’
The wherryman looked at him sharply. ‘Are you sure, sir?’ he asked. ‘River’s high and there’s a powerful current running under the bridge. Might be dangerous. Could put you off at Swan Lane. Only a short walk from there to the Tower.’
‘Have you been through the bridge today?’ asked Christopher.
‘I have not, sir, and have no wish to do so.’
‘What about you two?’ he asked the others.
‘We’ve been through, sir, and are still here, rough though it was.’
‘Then you’ll have no difficulty in doing so again. Tower steps it is.’
‘As you wish, sir. Sixpence that will be.’ Fares across the river were regulated by law. Up and down they varied with the distance, the tide and the weather.
Christopher took a coin from his purse and handed it to the elder of the two. Wherrymen liked to be paid in advance rather than risk having to watch helplessly as their passenger leapt out at their destination and ran off.
The elder man took up his position on the planked seat in the middle of the boat. The younger held it steady against the pier as Christopher stepped on board, then jumped in after him. Christopher took a seat at the stern, facing the rowers. If it really was rough under the bridge, a larger boat would be safer.
At first the river was calm enough with but a gentle swell and the breeze was light. Children were scavenging on the mudbanks while fishers tried their luck with long lines. The wind was no more than a stiff breeze and the bridge should present no problem.
When the bridge came into sight, however, he began to have doubts. Where the channel narrowed under its arches, the water was heaving and rolling in fountains of white spray. He opened his mouth to shout at the wherryman to make for Swan Lane but too late. The wherry shot forward on the current and was swept towards the bridge. Christopher steeled himself for the impact and for a drenching. The wherrymen, their backs to the bridge, shipped their oars and waited for calmer waters or the crash of timber against stone.
Whether by good fortune or their skill in positioning the boat, they raced under the central arch and emerged damp but intact on the other side. Christopher tried to look unconcerned but knew that running the bridge had been foolish. He shook water from his hair and wiped his face with a corner of his gown. The elder man grinned toothlessly and said nothing.
At Tower steps Christopher alighted carefully and walked up the hill to the Postern Gate, still trying to dry himself off. Why had he done it? He could have walked from Cheapside to the Tower easily enough or he could have heeded the wherryman’s advice and alighted at Swan Lane. For the devilment perhaps. Since Paris, devilment of one sort or another came readily to him. From the gate he was escorted between the curtain walls to the Salt Tower, from which ran a line of low buildings westwards towards Broad Arrow Tower. These were the mint workshops.
He waited in a small hallway while Richard Martin was summoned. From the workshops came the ring of hammer on metal and the crackle of flames in a furnace. Martin entered through a door off the hallway and grinned. ‘Dr Radcliff, I see you have travelled by wherry. Was that wise?’
Christopher shook more river water from his coat. ‘It would appear not.’
‘Can I be of assistance?’
‘Thank you, no, Mr Martin. I shall dry off soon enough.’
‘Then welcome to the Royal Mint. I take it you have not visited us before.’ Today the warden, in a red gown trimmed with white rabbit fur, was more colourful. Yesterday, careful not to exceed his station, today an effort to impress.
‘I have not, sir,’ replied Christopher, ‘although the Tower itself is regrettably familiar to me.’ The gruesome sight of a sheep, face down on the rack and stretched until its limbs were ripped from its body like corks popping from bottles, while the traitor Patrick Wolf was made to watch, came back to him. Wolf himself had avoided the same fate by being murdered in his cell that night. For Christopher, who would have been expected to witness the racking, his death had been half drawback, half relief. ‘I should be happy not to enter it again.’
Martin laughed. ‘Fear not, doctor, the mint is managed quite separately from the Tower and we seldom have need to venture within the inner wall. Now let me show you our workings.’ Beckoning his visitor to follow, he led the way out of the Salt Tower to the first workshop.
The moment they stepped into the place, Christopher put his hands to his ears. On one side of the room, a row of beaters hammered at ingots of silver. On the other, the flattened ingots were laid on a long-handled tray not unlike that which a baker might use, and placed in a furnace to be softened. As he watched, trays of ingots were taken from the furnace to the beaters to be shaped and then back again to the furnace, back and forth, until they were ready for rolling and cutting. In each corner of the room stood an overseer. Beaters and overseers alike wore woollen caps with long flaps that covered their ears and were tied under the chin. Scant protection from the noise but probably better than nothing. It was as if twenty blacksmiths were hammering out horseshoes in a single forge. Conversation was impossible. They did not stay for long.
‘Alas,’ said Martin when they were outside again, ‘many of our beaters are deaf. It is a price they, and we, have to pay for the work. They jest that their deafness brings them money for ale and spares them the carping tongues of their wives when they return from the taproom. Man is ever adept at finding humour in misfortune, don’t you agree, Dr Radcliff?’
Martin did not wait for a reply but opened another door and ushered him into a second workshop. Here teams of men working in pairs were stamping the silver discs with trussels and dies. Compared to the first workshop, it was blessedly quiet. The men worked steadily, soon filling a wicker basket with minted coins. ‘You are familiar with the Trial of the Pyx, doctor, I expect?’ asked Martin.
Up to that point Richard Martin had seemed an agreeable enough fellow but the question irked Christopher. Martin knew perfectly well that Christopher was as likely to be familiar with the Pyx as he himself was with Justinian’s Codex. He disliked self-regarding men who treated conversation like a player at jeu-de-paume, always looking to score points from his opponent. There had been scholars at Pembroke Hall who seemed to live for little else. ‘Naturally I am aware of the ceremony of the Pyx, Mr Martin, but my knowledge is limited to the origin of the word. Do, please, enlighten me.’
Martin caught his tone and glanced sideways. ‘Then I will be brief, doctor. Pyxis, as you know, is the Latin word for a small box, and refers to the chests in which randomly selected samples from each minting are taken to the Star Chamber to be tested by a jury of goldsmiths before the Privy Council and the lords of the treasury. The assessed samples are kept as standards in the treasury and any of inferior standard are sent back to us to be melted down and reminted.’
‘Thereby avoiding the worst of the debasements common thirty or forty years ago and making the identification of counterfeit coins easier.’
Martin’s eyebrows rose. ‘Exactly, doctor. You are well informed. Not a perfect process but better than it once was and overseen at all times.’
The pairs of minters were also watched over by overseers and at the door, unguarded on the outside, were stationed two armed yeomen. Martin went on: ‘We do what we can to prevent theft but in truth it is all too easy for our processes to be copied by coiners, not uncommonly men who have worked here before using what they have learned to their own criminal advantage. And it is hard to track them down. Illegal mints producing small quantities of false coins are hidden away in cellars and lofts and the coins are swiftly distributed through the markets.’
‘The silver for their coins coming from clipping and culling good money.’
‘That is correct, doctor, and also from collecting silver dust by shaking coins vigorously in a bag, but that produces only small amounts. It is known as sweating the coins.’
Christopher nodded. He had heard of this. It sounded inefficient – as if it was the coiner who sweated for scant reward.
‘And then there are the Flemish. If they do not come here to practise their nefarious trade, they find ever more ingenious ways of smuggling their coins in. At the ports we must look out for wine barrels full of them. We recently found a large bag of crowns hidden in a consignment of Flemish lace.’ Martin laughed. ‘I wonder they bother. The lace is costly enough.’
‘Surely you cannot check every barrel and crate coming across the narrow sea?’
‘Indeed we cannot. Our informers are our best protection although they too are not always above suspicion. One coiner or shipper of false coins may inform on another to rid himself of a competitor.’
‘But these new testons are different, are they not?’
‘They are. Counterfeiting our coinage is treason enough, but replacing the head of the queen and the royal emblem is a yet more heinous crime.’ Martin hesitated. ‘Are you aware of the stories of such coins at the time the Earl of Warwick, Leicester’s father, appointed himself Duke of Northumberland?’
‘I am not.’
‘Then I shall tell you. It will help you understand the earl’s anxiety. Let us find a quiet corner where we can refresh ourselves.’
In Martin’s office they sat with glasses of hippocras served by a mint official. Martin took a sip and smacked his lips in appreciation. ‘Excellent. I insist on plenty of cinnamon in the making. How do you find it, doctor?’
‘Very agreeable, Mr Martin,’ replied Christopher, thinking that there was far too much spice in it. ‘The very thing for a cold morning.’