by A D Swanston
Perhaps the market traders would take pity on the girl and lower their prices. In any event, he could hardly turn her away. ‘Very well, Joan. Let us see how we fare. When at home I am usually to be found in my study. Please do not disturb me there or move anything in my absence. The shirts, in particular, are not to be touched. Is that understood?’
‘It is, sir,’ she mumbled.
‘Excellent,’ said Katherine. ‘Now I suggest that you take the air while I instruct Joan on her duties and show her the rooms.’
‘I have just taken the air. It was cold.’
‘So I gathered. Take some more. You will only be in the way.’
He had not even taken off his coat. ‘Twenty minutes, no more. I have work to do.’ With rather more force than was necessary, he shut the door behind him and set off towards Fetter Lane where the affable Mr Brewster might have some new fancies to offer him. He liked fancies – light at heart and easy to play. If he turned towards St Paul’s and walked round the church to Fetter Lane, there and back should take about the required time.
But he did not get far. In St Paul’s churchyard, still devoid of stationers’ stalls, twenty or more clamouring men and women were crowded around the church door. He worked his way through them until he could see the door clearly. On it, daubed in red, was another slogan, like the Hempe prophecy poorly executed in red paint but legible. Conceived in lust in Mouldwarp’s bed, the witch will die unloved, unwed. It too was marked with an X.
Some believed that Mouldwarp had first appeared in a prophecy by the wizard Merlin. During the reign of the queen’s father it had been used to insult him. The king himself had found the word amusing or intolerable, as the mood took him. Now, in a new form and long after his death, here it was again.
One man read the words aloud for those who could not do so. ‘What does it mean?’ asked a boy at the front. ‘And what is Mouldwarp?’
‘Hush, child,’ replied one who might have been his father. ‘Mouldwarp is an ancient word for a mole. You need know no more.’
Without warning, the church door was thrown open and an elderly priest emerged, tears running down his veiny cheeks. ‘Acts of sacrilege!’ he shouted. ‘The door of our church defaced and our Book of Martyrs also.’ The crowd stared at him. ‘A foul papist has entered our church and left his mark on the book.’
Christopher pushed his way forward and spoke quietly to the distraught man. ‘I am Dr Christopher Radcliff, in the service of the Earl of Leicester. Permit me to examine the book.’ At first the priest did not appear to understand but stood facing the crowd, wild-eyed and disbelieving. Christopher touched his shoulder and repeated what he had said. This time the priest nodded and stepped aside to allow him to enter the church.
On the death of her sister Mary, Cambridge had waited for religious guidance from the new queen. Would she espouse Mary’s Catholicism or would she lead the country back to Protestantism, the faith in which she herself had been brought up? Within days of her making it clear that it would be the latter, every vestige of the old ways had been stripped from the Pembroke chapel. Gone were the Latin prayer books, vestments and images, gone were the elaborate furnishings, altar cloths and censers. In their place a copy of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, depicting the Protestant martyrs who had died at the stake during Mary’s rule, soon lay, open and much read, on a lectern to the left of the altar. And now, sixteen years later, the queen was governor of the Church of England and a hated enemy of Rome. Cuius regio, eius religio.
The book was open at an illustration of three women burning at the stake. Christopher remembered it. It was a depiction of a mother and her two daughters on the island of Guernsey being burned at the stake for their Protestant beliefs. A large cross had been cut diagonally across the page, slicing through the flames and the face of the mother. ‘When was this found?’ he asked.
The priest’s voice shook with anger. ‘I have only now seen it. The book was unmarked yesterday.’
Christopher turned the page. The incision had cut into the next illustration. ‘Are you sure?’
‘As sure as I am of Almighty God. The act was committed during the night. The church is never locked and it would not have been difficult for a foul papist to enter unseen. He must be caught and hanged.’
‘Inform the magistrate. He will investigate the crime. And have the words on the door removed at once or they will fan the flames of unrest.’
‘Yes, doctor.’
‘And you would be wise to lock the church doors at night.’
Hempe and Mouldwarp and the Book of Martyrs – all marked with a cross. Yet another papist plot to foment insurrection?
Mr Brewster would have to wait for another day. He carried on to Leadenhall before turning back, and on an impulse turned down Dog’s Head Lane, the shortest route home. The lane was narrow and dark, barely wide enough for two men to pass each other and deprived of light by the upper storeys of the dwellings on either side which overhung so far that they almost touched each other. Some of the dwellings were boarded up and marked with a red cross to signify plague. The occupants would have been shut in and left to die. He would not normally have ventured down the lane but he was anxious to be home.
With a hand on the poniard, he walked quickly, seeing no one. But nearing the end of the lane, where a little more light penetrated, a noise behind him made him turn. There was nothing. A dog perhaps, or a rat scrabbling for food. He cursed himself for his foolishness and hurried on.
He had seen nothing and heard little, yet at Ludgate Hill he fumbled with the lock. Either his mind was playing tricks or he had been watched.
Joan and Katherine had gone. He reached under the pile of clothes and brought out the lute. It needed a little tuning – with six courses of strings, five double strings and a single treble, each of which had to be tuned, not a straightforward task – but he did not hurry. ‘The musician, like the artist, never hurries,’ his teacher had once told him after he had impatiently over-tightened a treble string and broken it. Outside London good strings were expensive and hard to find. There was nothing worse than running out of strings and having to wait for the next market day in the hope that a vendor would have some. Never hurry. A simply stated lesson which, like all good lessons, he had never forgotten.
At first he had taken himself back to the beginner’s exercises he remembered having to repeat over and over again until he could do them without thought, even to the extent of reciting the courses as he played them. Treble, small meanes, great meanes, contratenor, tenor, bass, and back again in the reverse order. He had found unexpected pleasure in performing such a childish exercise and still performed it from time to time. It reminded him of his parents, both taken by the plague while he was teaching at Pembroke Hall.
He chose an almain, a slow, steady piece that would not test him unduly. He had always been more comfortable with English and French dance music than with Italian madrigal intabulations. He found in them more melody and harmony.
The thoughtful pace of the dance suited his mood. He played it from the tablature, striving especially for contrast between the louder notes played by the thumb and the softer ones played by the fingers.
But concentration was difficult and after playing the piece three times, he set the lute aside, knowing that he had not played well. He never did when he was uneasy.
CHAPTER 6
That night the dreams returned. A year and a half since the slaughter in Paris yet they had lost none of their intensity.
This time he had seen priests drinking the blood of a face sliced by knives and axes, a lipless mouth gaping in a silent scream and a young woman clutching her headless child as she fell to her knees. She had been a Huguenot – that he knew – and she had died in Cambridge outside Pembroke Hall. He had watched himself walk unharmed through the slashing blades and in vain stretch out his arms to the woman as she and her child dissolved into a pool of blood.
The dreams varied yet were always the same. Blood, agony, death. He had tr
ied abstinence, excess and moderation. He had tried fasting, prayer and potions. None had worked. The terrors came and went as they wished. He longed for a physic to cleanse his memory and render him free of their grip. But if one existed he had not yet found it.
He tugged the covers around his shoulders, tried to clear his mind of the tormenting images and waited for sleep to return. It did not. His mind would not allow it.
Ancient slogans marked with crosses and the desecration of the Book of Martyrs at St Paul’s, also cut in the shape of a cross, and false testons that had not been seen for a generation. A coincidence – or was there a connection and, if so, what? And without knowing their purpose how was he to find the coiners, save for an informer appearing from nowhere like a deus ex machina or Isaac catching a word on the breeze? Small numbers of false coins could be easily produced with the right tools and with little risk of detection. A cellar, a stable, a derelict building – all could hide a small-scale coiner and his work, as Martin had made clear.
In Dog’s Head Lane he had been watched. He was sure of it. But in such a place there would be eyes in dark doorways and shadowy corners looking out for easy pickings. Of course he had been watched. He had been foolish to walk down that lane alone and was lucky to have done so unmolested.
He was in the study when Katherine arrived bearing food and accompanied by Joan Willys. ‘Joan will set the fires while I prepare breakfast,’ she announced. ‘Go and dress.’
He glanced at the girl, who looked as if she were about to burst into tears, opened his mouth to remind her not to disturb his papers or touch the pile of shirts, thought better of it and went up to the bed chamber. Surely Katherine could have found someone a little more favoured in looks and manner?
He came down again to find the grate cleared out, a new fire set and a good blaze warming the study while the women busied themselves in the kitchen. Katherine indicated a chair. ‘Sit down, Christopher. Joan will clean your bed chamber while you eat.’
Christopher managed a thin smile. ‘It is cold up there, Joan. Better wear your coat.’
‘I have arranged for Joan’s cousin to mend the window,’ said Katherine. ‘He will come later today.’ Joan nodded and went up to the chamber.
He took a spoonful of oatmeal porridge and opened his eyes in surprise. ‘Excellent. Does the girl cook as well as you do?’
‘Better. This recipe is hers. We bought the oatmeal together and her uncle keeps bees. It is the honey that gives the porridge its sweetness. The skill is in knowing how much to add and when to do so. The porridge must be neither too hot nor too cool.’
He lowered his voice. ‘She seems timid. I do hope she will not take fright easily.’
‘She will need time to become accustomed to you, Christopher, but she is hard-working and capable and she cannot help how she looks. At least afford her a chance.’
‘I will, of course, although it would be easier if you taught her to speak clearly.’
Katherine pointed her finger at him and spoke sharply. ‘You will soon become accustomed to her manner of speaking and that is an end to it.’
Christopher shrugged and scraped the last of the porridge from his bowl. ‘Is there more?’
‘Not today. I will ask Joan to make more next time.’ Katherine cleared away the bowl and sat at the table. ‘She is knowledgeable about plants. You might ask her to suggest a salve for your hand.’
Christopher stretched his fingers and grunted. ‘They are past curing.’
The kitchen door opened and Joan came in. She carried a bundle of clothes wrapped up in a bed sheet under her arm. ‘The chamber is cleaned, sir,’ she said. ‘I will take these to be washed. Should I return them tomorrow?’
‘Yes, yes, Joan. Tomorrow.’
‘Are you sure you would not like me to take the shirts in your study, sir? It would be no trouble.’
‘No. Leave the shirts.’ The words came out more sharply than he had intended.
Katherine stood up. ‘Thank you, Joan, you have done well and the porridge was excellent. As you see, Dr Radcliff has eaten it all. Come at eight every morning but Sundays, if you please. The doctor will not expect you on Sundays. He will pay you two shillings at the end of each week and will advance you the money for food. Just tell him how much.’
Joan bobbed a clumsy curtsy. ‘Thank you, madam. A shilling for food should suffice.’
‘A shilling it is. You shall have it tomorrow.’ Katherine waited until they heard the front door close before speaking again. ‘You were short, Christopher. Be civil to the girl and be grateful that she is willing to put up with you.’
Christopher grunted. ‘I will try. Is two shillings a week enough? Did I not pay Rose two shillings and sixpence?’
‘It is enough.’ She sat down again. ‘Have you thought more about the testons?’
‘I have. As yet we have not seen many of them and they are as easy to spot as a fox in a hen house. The coiners are not about their work for profit.’
‘Then what?’
‘An insult to the Dudley family. To embarrass the earl. To cause trouble. Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘Why and by whom? A rival? Thomas Heneage, Christopher Hatton? Surely not.’
‘It seems preposterous, but who else might wish him ill with such venom that they are willing to risk being hanged and quartered just to make him blush before the queen?’
Katherine laughed. ‘A pretty picture you paint, Christopher. No, if the coiners of the testons are not seeking profit, they are surely seeking more than a mere lordly blush.’
‘I hope for help from Richard Martin. Or perhaps Isaac will learn something.’ He paused. ‘I saw a Mouldwarp prophecy at St Paul’s yesterday.’’
‘Mouldwarp? But we haven’t seen that for years. What did it say?’
‘Conceived in lust in Mouldwarp’s bed, the witch will die, unloved, unwed.’
‘Hempe and Mouldwarp and an attack on the queen.’ She frowned. ‘Could the slogans and the testons be treasonous bed-fellows, do you suppose?’
‘I have thought about that. I do not see how but if they are not, it is a strange coincidence that they should all appear now.’
‘What might we see next, I wonder?’
Next, it was not false coins or ruined books or graffiti scrawled on a wall, but sheets of paper scattered outside the Guildhall. Christopher had left Joan to her cooking and cleaning and picked one up as he passed. The paper was made from poor rags and was rough to the touch. Printed on one side was a third couplet. If Amy’s death had natural been, Would Dudley then have wed our queen? It too was marked with an X.
A group of merchants in thick coats, some trimmed with rabbit or fox, stood at the entrance to the Hall, their breath clouding in the cold. Each held a paper in a gloved hand. Christopher asked them what they made of it.
‘It is treasonous, to be sure,’ said one, ‘and an insult to the Earl of Leicester. The magistrate must be told.’
‘I had thought this matter long closed,’ said another. ‘It is fourteen years since Amy Robsart died, is it not? Why would it come to the fore now?’
‘Who knows what trouble is brewing at court?’ replied the first man. ‘The earl is not without enemies and they say that in Whitehall Palace even the walls have ears.’
A third man joined in. ‘There have been slogans elsewhere. I saw one at St Paul’s. It too was marked with a cross. And their Book of Martyrs has been cut and defaced. What mischief is afoot?’
‘I am at a loss as to how the perpetrators of these crimes have gone undetected.’ It was the first man again. ‘What about the watch and ward? Where are the constables we pay for?’
‘There are plague crosses appearing on houses where there has never been sickness,’ added another voice, shrill with indignation. ‘Who is doing this?’
‘And what is their purpose?’ asked the first man. ‘Why mark healthy houses?’
Christopher left them to their chatter and carried on to Cheapside. God alone knew
how and why the slogans had suddenly appeared and this leaflet had certainly come from an illegal press. No licensed printer would have risked producing it. But there were illegal presses tucked away in cellars all over the city. Any one of them could have printed it.
As he walked down Cheapside, it happened again. A certainty that he was being watched crept up his spine to his neck. He turned sharply. In a crowded street full of market stalls it would have been easy for a watcher to go unnoticed and he saw nothing odd – only traders and their customers about their business. Yet the uncomfortable feeling remained.
He laid the leaflet on his writing table and smoothed it out. If Amy’s death had natural been, Would Dudley then have wed our queen? It was roughly printed in black ink and the paper was ragged around the edges. He turned it over and looked closely but there was no clue as to its source.
He had been twenty, a pupil at Pembroke Hall, at the time of Amy Robsart’s death. The news books had reported on almost nothing else for weeks and the jokers and jesters among the undergraduates had run amok on the streets and in the taverns and inns. Contests had been held for the wittiest verses daubed on church walls. It had been the same, they said, in every town in England. Even the inquest jury’s verdict of misfortune had not stopped tongues wagging. Some had pointed to Amy’s frail health and spells of melancholy and had wondered if the wife of Robert Dudley had taken her own life. On the day she died at their home near Oxford, she had sent all her servants away to a local fair – evidence, they claimed, that she had planned to kill herself.
Others agreed with the jury that it had been an accident. She had fallen down a short flight of stairs and broken her neck. She was known to be unwell and might have fainted or been taken by a seizure. Yet others – the quietest but most insidious – had claimed that Dudley had arranged his wife’s murder, leaving him free to marry the queen. After all, they pointed out, he spent much more time with Her Majesty than ever he had with Amy and he did not even trouble to attend her funeral. They dismissed the jury’s verdict as ‘convenient’ and ‘arranged’.