A Dangerous Trade: An Elizabethan Spy Thriller

by Steven Veerapen

  ‘Get yourselves into doors,’ said a harried-looking Woodward, his clothes mud-splattered but his face alive with authority. ‘You shall have a chamber above the stables, a single room. I suppose your wife will want to lie with you rather than with the other maids on the laundry floor?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘But remember that it is not your property but the earl’s. You might needs have to leave it at any point if it is needed for someone greater than a horseman and his wench. And get that bloody great beast housed and seen to. I must attend on the master.’ He gestured in the direction of one wall of the house, lined with real glass windows, and then hurried on, issuing directions and commands as he went.

  Jack had dismounted, and Amy had joined him. He noticed that the other servants, each seeming to know what they were doing, had abandoned their horses and realised with a start that he was now expected to deal with them. He gave a frightened look to Amy, but it was not her who answered it. It was Philip Heydon.

  ‘Jack, the stable is over there. If the earl’s master of horse is absent, then there will be some boys about. Don’t be afraid to show them your authority.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Heydon.’

  ‘Please, call me Philip when we are just us. Ah, this must be your lovely wife. Mrs Cole, yes?’

  Heydon swept off his cap and bowed to Amy. Jack had told her all about him, but she had, annoyingly, avoided every opportunity on the road to speak to him herself. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m Mistress Cole. And pleased I am to meet you.’ Jack didn’t like her tone. It was cold, distant, not like her at all.

  ‘I think we shall get to become friends, mistress, in time. You have a fine husband and you do him proud. Although I confess I had preferred the pleasure of riding here with you rather than your husband.’ He paused his suddenly eloquent flow when he saw Amy pulling a face at him. ‘At present I must go and find where I am to lodge. Good morrow to you.’ Again he bowed, clapped Jack on the shoulder, and strode off as if he owned the place.

  Silence had descended on the courtyard, the twilight and the cold making it seem a crystalline, self-contained world. ‘Your friend,’ said Amy, ‘is a man of charm.’

  ‘You were a bit rude to him, Amy – don’t you like him?’

  ‘I don’t know him. He’s your friend.’

  ‘He’s a gentleman and a scholar. How about that? Us friends with a gentleman – that’ a fine thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘That depends on the gentleman. Though I think he’s not as witty as he thinks he is.’

  ‘Well … maybe his jesting is a little …’ Jack struggled, a little needle of conflicted loyalty stabbing at him.

  ‘Me, I think I’d laugh harder at my own funeral than his jesting. Why, I wonder, should a gentleman take such interest in a man who works in the stables?’

  ‘Philip’s a traveller, he says he doesn’t think of the world of rank and all that. He says in all the world we are one people and one faith.’

  ‘What? One faith? And Philip, is it?’ Amy’s brow knitted.

  ‘Ugh, he just means that there need be no stout walls of rank between friends. He thinks we’re his friends.’

  ‘He thinks you are his friend.’

  Jack folded his arms. He did not care for his wife’s strange show of dislike, and he didn’t want to encourage it. That wasn’t how he’d imagined their new life starting out at all. ‘I can’t leave the horses out here,’ he said, hoping to stop an awkward silence in its tracks. ‘Can you shift for yourself and find our chamber?’ He hoped she would take care of that for him – the thought of having to enter the great house without knowing exactly where to go brought on an extra wave of anxiety.

  ‘Yes, husband,’ she said. There was no humour in the use of the word this time. He wondered if something else was on her mind.

  ‘Here, did you see a man in brown when we set out? And again on the road?’ she asked, as though in answer.

  ‘A man …’ Jack cast his mind back. ‘Yes, I think so. Once or twice. A pedlar or something. All muffled against the cold. ‘Some silvery hair under a cap, I think.’

  ‘Did he? I just saw the cap and scarf.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Just didn’t like the look of him, that’s all.’

  ‘Well we got here without him robbing us. So that’s something, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, a little reluctantly.

  ‘Good girl.’ He paused, before adding, ‘I love you, Amy.’

  ‘I love you too,’ she said, and the warmth of her smile cracked the ice that had started up between them.

  ***

  Amy asked her way to their chamber up an outside staircase and along a wood-panelled corridor. There was a sprawling collection of rooms some way above the stable block. As she had discovered from speaking with her fellow matrons on the road, there were few female servants. Instead, there was the usual male chain of command, with steward, butlers, ushers, waiters, cupbearers, servers and carvers each vying for authority. It was the steward, the haughty Mr Woodward, who attempted to run the place as a military operation.

  On finding their new home, a tiny chamber with two separate beds, she sat down and put her head in her hands. The mysterious man in brown seemed to have given up – or got better at hiding – by the time they had reached Derbyshire, but still he poked his head into her thoughts. She could not escape the feeling that something unpleasant was about to happen, that she and Jack had been led into something much bigger than themselves. She looked around the bare chamber, more akin to a monastic cell than a bedroom. She supposed it was designed to be a place for heads to droop at the end of the day and nothing more. It was all plastered and clean, but soulless. Well, she would just have to change that. Sighing, she got up off the bed, wincing at a loose straw that poked through the rough canvas. Typical. The beds were as rough as possible, the better to prevent people oversleeping and shirking work. She worked it back in and, when it proved stubborn, kicked the bed.

  She had taken her pack from her horse and began to unwrap it. Onto the beds went her spare sleeves and her mother’s trinkets. On tiptoes, she placed the sprig of holly she had brought above the door lintel. Tomorrow would be Christmas, she mused – the start of the days of revelry. A good chance to meet the new folk when they were all drunk and happy, and to take advantage of being new herself.

  One man she did not trust yet was Mr Philip Heydon. For all her husband had raved about what an exciting man he was, she had no interest in a much-storied young gentleman. Annoyingly, Jack hadn’t taken up her attempts to belittle the man with anything like the enthusiasm she had expected; normally he would read her attitude and mirror it. Something about Heydon must have been stronger than her own will. Everyone knew about the hijinks, the madcap schemes, that such young fellows got up to. Wenching, carousing, politics: if her husband got himself in thrall to this man, she knew he would eagerly join him in anything. She would just have to watch out for him, that was all. She would just have to be his mother.

  It was some time later that Jack found her. ‘You were a time,’ she said. ‘Are the horses seen to?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. His arms were laden with bread and cheese. ‘Look!’

  They ate a while in silence. ‘What do you think of the place? It’s fine, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ she said, one cheek distended. ‘A fine place. The other women seem pleasant enough.’

  ‘We’ll like it here, don’t you think?’

  ‘I hope so.’ She realised she was being moody. ‘Yes, Jack, I reckon we’ll like it here. Food, a roof, work, each other – what else do we need?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he beamed. ‘I knew you would like it here. I like it.’

  ‘Did you meet the earl’s horse master?’

  ‘No. No, he wasn’t there. In fact, the stable lads told me that he never is, not except on special days. In truth, they said the earl has been in need of a new man to tend the horses. So, it’s like a step ahead for me. For us. That’s good, isn’t
it?’

  ‘Yes, Jack,’ she said, patting his head. ‘That’s very good.’

  ‘What’s better is that tomorrow’s Christmas. So we don’t even have to start working straight away. Who gets a holiday right before starting a new job of work, eh? Mr and Mrs Cole, that’s who.’

  Before she could reply, the door opened without a knock and a little head popped in. ‘Mr Woodward says to say the earl wants all the house in the great hall now,’ said the page. Then, ‘you have to put this on, Mr.’ He thrust out a bundle. Jack got up, took it, and the boy was gone before he could thank him and ask him where the great hall was.

  With his back to Amy, Jack changed out of his dirty doublet and slipped the livery over his head, brushing a hand over the rough-sewn badge. She laced on fresh sleeves and, taking her little brush, wiped off the worst of the dust that had got under her riding cloak. ‘Come on,’ she said, inspecting him. ‘That looks good on you. Better than the duke’s.’ Then a sharpness came into her eyes. ‘Though they could do with finer seamstresses here, I reckon. Anyway, they told me where the hall is. Let’s go.’

  Thanks to Amy, they found the great hall on the east side of the courtyard. It was a cavernous room and still it was filled to capacity. The smell of fire mingled with sweat and the chalky scent of broken rushes, all of it emanating in a hot, heavy wave out of the double doors. They filed in through an antechamber, where a tubby little man in a tabard ostentatiously checked their names against a ledger and inspected their hands and shoes. ‘Hey! Out, you brute, out!’ the usher hissed, making them both jump. A dog had attracted his attention and he manoeuvred his froglike body around them, clapping his hands until he had chased it outside. Shrugging at one an another, Jack led Amy into a press of warmth, light and heat. Conversation rippled. ‘It’s all settled’; ‘he’s going to tell us tonight’; ‘no, he’ll wait until after the revels’. A few heads turned in their direction, giving them appraising looks, but no one tried to engage them.

  ‘What’s it all about?’ Amy asked, grabbing at the sleeve of an older woman she didn’t know. She felt Jack stiffen, as he sometimes did when she was pointed, but if she let that bother her, the two would live in silence and dumb ignorance all their lives.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘The new laundress. Is the earl to wish us a happy Christmas?’

  ‘Yes. No.’ The woman’s jowls bounced, her skin loose and leathery. ‘I mean yes, he will – but he’s going to tell us what to expect. They say the Scotch queen is coming into his care – under this roof. Herself! He’ll have to say something about that, I reckon. Hush!’

  The whole room seemed to obey the woman’s command. The usher had entered the hall, and he strode sedately forward, his chest out. ‘Give place, give place. Speak softly, now. The earl comes.’ He moved towards the front of the hall, the crowd parting for him. If there was one thing you could be sure of, thought Amy, it was that ushers were puffed-up toads in every great house.

  From a private entrance the earl emerged, leading a stout, handsome woman. He led her to chairs on the raised dais at the end of the room and waited until she sat before he addressed the crowd.

  ‘My good people, I bid you welcome,’ he said, his hands clasped behind his back. ‘And the countess and I wish you the very best of the season to come.’ He licked his lips. ‘We find it fitting that you all hear about what is to come before you begin your revelries. When your work commences in full after Twelfth Night, it is likely that there shall be some slight changes. We are to expect a guest.’ No one spoke, but silent excitement shivered through the room. ‘Yes. In fact, the countess and I shall be taking a journey immediately after the festivities. We think it meet that you should know now that we shall require stout men and a number of womenfolk to come with us to our castle at Tutbury as soon as the revels are ended. We shall decide in our course who and how many of you we shall need. Until then, we discharge you of your right duties to us until the feast days are ended. Please, good people, make merry and rest. We all of us have a time of trial coming to us. But a time of the highest honour too. Remember that, all of you.’

  He stood back and smiled at his wife. The countess returned it. She looked tired, though, thought Amy. Shrewsbury held out a hand and she took it, rising from her chair. Together they left the servants to their gossip.

  ‘Tutbury,’ shrieked the old woman Amy had accosted at no one in particular. ‘Jesus, what a place. Did you not hear, there’s been murder done around there lately? I’m not bloody going there!’

  Jack looked down at Amy. ‘What was that about then? The queen of Scots isn’t being sent here?’

  ‘I suppose not. Where on earth is Tutbury?’ Jack shrugged. Their new friend seized her chance.

  ‘It’s one of the earl’s castles. Away out in Staffordshire somewhere. An old place, falling apart, they say. They’ve never taken us out that way – it’s a ruined place. I tell you, that’s where they must be taking Queen Mary to put her to death.’ She had begun to babble, and Amy wondered if she was a little drunk. ‘They can’t make us go out there, though I swear in faith I’d follow the countess to ends of the earth. You, you’re the new girl – you can go!’

  Amy felt a chill run through her, but with it a little thrill of excitement she couldn’t account for. ‘Do you think they’ll want me?’ she asked Jack. He shrugged again. ‘I mean, I’ll go if I have to. But … well, I reckon they’ll want you here if it’s just a few going. If the horse master is so poor.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jack.

  ‘Well, we might be getting broken apart come January.’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘And,’ whispered Amy, ‘what the hell is this about murder?’ She looked around for the gossiping woman, but she had moved deeper into the throng, and seemed to be repeating herself to others.

  ‘Who knows? Probably nothing. People die all the time and it’s blamed on something or other.’

  ‘But murder!’

  ‘Stop it, Amy. Stop talking about that. Please.’

  She drew back, reading his face. It had paled, even in the flickering light of dozens of candles and a roaring fireplace. ‘Sorry,’ she said, unsure why. ‘I only … I only hope that this thing, whatever it is, with the Scottish queen is done and over quickly.’

  5

  Jack tightened his coat against the chill. Winter had sunk its teeth in and January was turning out to be a colder, darker, wetter month than December. He had set the stable boys to doing what he used to do: sweeping, brushing, and cleaning tools. It felt good. He could take to the job of a superior, even it was usurping the job of the horse master. The old man, a friend of the earl’s, stuck a florid face into the stables every few days but otherwise stretched out his dinners and began his suppers early. The rumour was that he spent most of his time in the village, courting local women. Knowing that he now had a new man come from the duke of Norfolk seemed to have enabled his lack of care more than ever. The other horse keepers, too, had shown deference. Knowing that he came from a ducal household and was nominally the steward’s man had brought him respect – a new thing.

  Jack stepped away from the stables, out into the courtyard. Every so often the smell of horses and their mess required it. Messengers had ridden in and out of Chatsworth since he had arrived, and he had kept an eye on all of it. The only thing of interest had been a letter from the earl of Leicester, stamped from the privy council. That was none of his concern. Nothing had come from Norfolk and all that had gone out to him were letters of thanks and several haunches of venison killed during the Christmas hunts and sent out as a new year’s gift. Dimly he wondered how the extra payments would be doled out to him, but he could certainly not write to the duke himself. His job, as he understood it, was to be a watcher, not an interferer. Thus far, there had been precious little to watch. He hoped it would stay that way.

  Yes, he liked being part of a big house, he thought, letting his eyes wander up the neat glass and stone of the buildings in front
of him. You knew what you were and what you were supposed to be doing. But sometimes he liked to take a little walk and close his eyes and imagine being his own man. That was one role he had never got to play. It was a fantasy, of course – being your own man meant being out in the world, scratching a living, starving if a crop failed or fire hit you. But it was a nice thought. Amy would be by his side, of course, because were else could his wife be? Maybe marriage hadn’t brought him the sense of duty and normalcy and acceptance he had hoped would arrive overnight, but she was his now and forever. He let the image come: he and Amy in some village together, hidden from the world, not having to think about precedence and hierarchy and the ruthless efficiency of a noble house. That’s what travelling offered, he thought. You could live somewhere under a burning sun one day and move on before people pried and came to expect you to open your mouth and your heart to them. You could be whatever you wanted to be and someone else when you arrived at a new home. ‘I’m Jack and this is my wife, Amy,’ he imagined himself saying to some smiling foreigner. ‘We are wealthy merchants. We seek adventure in the Holy Land. We are from the New World and have seen marvellous wonders. We are lately come out of the Indies.’

  ‘Good morrow to you, Jack.’ He started and turned, smiling when he saw Philip Heydon marching towards him, his black coat flying out.