A Dangerous Trade: An Elizabethan Spy Thriller

by Steven Veerapen

  Instead, Jack’s hand dropped away, leaving it sticking out of the man’s lower back.

  It made no difference. The body on the floor continued to wheeze in shallow, stuttering gasps. It made no other sound. ‘He’s still alive,’ said Jack, his voice expressionless. Heydon slid out the blade. Blood had begun to leak onto the wooden floor. It wasn’t the gush he had imagined – like a bladder full of it being punctured – but rather a slow, remorseless dribble. His mind had turned backwards, back to another day in another year, and he stood dumb and horror-struck.

  ‘We have to make an end of him,’ gasped Heydon. He was fighting to get his breath back, and had leant over the bed, his balled fists down on it. ‘We have to get rid of him.’ When Jack said nothing, he looked up. ‘You … you haven’t killed before?’

  As though from some distance away, Jack said, ‘Yes, Philip. Yes. I murdered my father.’

  ***

  Amy had been gathering all that she felt she needed to impress Brown. Like a bee collecting nectar, she had busied herself listening in on information from the Scottish queen. As she had suspected, no one paid any attention to her. Only the queen’s gentlewoman, the haughty dame called Seton who did up her wigs, seemed suspicious, and that too had faded when Amy had gone out of her way to find pins and little ribbons of cloth that made her job easier.

  They were at Wingfield – a manor house rather than a crumbling castle. But still there was a hard press of people. The tiresome old steward, Woodward, had been wandering the place top to bottom, creating a list of names. Apparently, there were more than two hundred folks crammed into the place, spilling out into the town. It would, the steward kept lamenting, take several weeks to get an accurate number – ‘Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand – Psalms’. It made moving about unnoticed easier rather than harder. There was such a press, such a crush of people around, that no one looked twice at anyone else.

  ‘No, no. It is no’ true.’ The sound of Queen Mary’s voice drifted from her bedchamber.

  ‘It is that, Majesty,’ returned her visitor. Amy had watched him go in when she gathered up the linens, before she dropped a curtsey and backed out of the chamber. But she did not go too far. ‘The whole damned pack o’ them are in airms and the honest, loyal men o’ your party are beaten back and harried wi’oot let or mercy. And … and I’ll no’ be sugarin’ it, Majesty. The common tongue aboot Edinburgh cries you for a whore, a common jade. And a murderess.’

  Silence spun out, followed by a sob. Amy used the moment of quiet to try and make sense of the man’s language. If only he would speak more slowly, the translation would be easier. ‘Aw, now, come now, please. It’s that br’er o’ yours.’

  ‘I have no brother,’ snapped Mary.

  ‘Moray. It’s Moray. You ask me he’s paid off traitors in the city to slander your name.’

  ‘Where is he? Did you set eyes on him?’

  ‘He’s going north, as I heard. To the wild lands, to subdue the heathens in those parts. Better they should slay him, you ask me.’

  ‘Faithful Sandy,’ said Mary. Her voice still carried the ragged edge of tears. ‘Oh, what is to become of me, shut up like a common thief.’

  ‘You’ll be freed, Majesty.’

  ‘My loyal subjects – they are planning my return?’ Silence drew out, followed by the man’s awkward coughing. ‘Then there is nothing. Nothing to hope for. I have nothing but fair words from this country’s mistress.’

  ‘This country’s mistress … you leave matters in the hands of the bishop. Dinnae cry, sweet lady. Leave all to your faithful men.’

  There were sounds of movement; Amy suspected that the interview was drawing to a close. In response she began to walk away, humming to herself. She slowed her pace as the man emerged from Mary’s chamber and swept past her, intent on fixing his hat back on his head. His name, she knew, was Alexander Bogg or Bock – a Scottish servant the queen had dispatched north for news before Jack and Heydon. Possibly he had met them somewhere on the road.

  ‘Leave matters to faithful men,’ she thought. She let it unroll in her mind. Was there some whiff of trickery or treason in it? That would be for Mr Brown to decide. ‘The bishop’ was the bishop of Ross, Mary’s ambassador to the English Court. Yes, it might be a plot. She left the tower rooms and went out into one of the house’s two courtyards. The ground was rutted and mutilated. A short distance away two workmen were prying at a cartwheel that had come loose and become wedged in the ground. They were too intent on grunting and heaving to bother with her, and the soldiers at the gate were themselves muttering darkly about their pay when she slipped out.

  Like Tutbury, Wingfield stood on a hill. Like the castle, it also had parklands, although they lay at the back of the house sloping downwards towards rangy and uncultivated ponds. Amy had no idea as she quickened her pace whether Brown had reached Wingfield. She reasoned, though, that if he did, he would keep to the usual time and a similar place. The pond itself would be too visible from the house’s tower rooms, so she wandered into the parklands.

  It was a strange feeling, seeing everything so spongy and budding and green. She looked down at her greying, patched dress as she crunched through the undergrowth. It had been white once. As the world turned green, she remained a drab. Funny; she had never cared about appearances, beyond neatness. In the past she had always relied on her mother’s constant, ‘don’t fuss – no one’s looking at you’ to excuse her poor dresses. Suddenly it felt a little hollow. Someone was going to be looking at her.

  So much for a new start with Jack. A pair of oddballs they were now. In her mind, her mother wagged a finger at her. What would you think of me now? she wondered. Telling tales for … not even for a reward. For a husband who seemed to get further away from her with each passing day.

  She began whistling her tune. Time passed, and her cheeks grew tired. She switched instead to the lyrics and began singing in her wobbly contralto.

  Behold the skies with golden dyes

  Are glowing all around;

  The grass is green, and so are the treen,

  All laughing with the sound.

  ‘The wrong verse, woman,’ snapped Brown. She didn’t jump. She had begun to expect his sudden appearances. Relief washed over her.

  ‘Yet the same tune.’

  ‘And you – are you still playing the same tune, or have you turned up something of use?’

  ‘She has had a visitor,’ said Amy. She leant against a tree with one arm. Under the other she had bundled the bedlinen. ‘The man she sent north. Sandy, she called him. Bogg. Or Bock.’

  ‘And?’ Brown was wearing his usual brown suit. She noticed that it always looked neat and pressed, the brass buttons always shining. Even his boots looked fairly well polished despite the fact he must skirt around undergrowth from wherever he lodged.

  ‘And he made her cry. Melancholic knave. Made her weep with tales of how her city slanders her.’

  ‘Good. A broken woman is the best type of woman.’ Amy opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. Something in his expression told her he would not stand for a rejoinder. ‘It is right that the whore weeps, for the sake of the world that weeps that a woman such as she has brought such destruction on good men. Does she plot with him? Has she spoken treason out of her own mouth?’

  Amy wished that she could say yes. But simple honesty prevented that. ‘No. No, she sits daily and plies her needle. It’s … it’s the men around her, the men of her household – them who whisper in corners and plot. I think she knows nothing save a desire to marry with the duke and be delivered up to him.’

  Brown folded his arms and gave her a hard look, his grey eyebrows knitting. Not for the first time she wondered what age he was. Somewhere near forty, she guessed. His face was smooth and unlined – a young man’s face with a young man’s eyes – but the frosted hair made him look older. ‘Has she turned you?’ he asked without expression. ‘Has that witch charmed you?’

  ‘N
o! Of course not. I … but I can’t lie. I can’t invent treasons where I hear none.’

  ‘Hmph.’

  ‘It is … well, she is in the dumps all the time.’

  ‘Does she speak treason out of her own lips?’

  ‘No!’ Brown seemed infuriatingly unable – or unwilling – to understand the emotion in her speech. ‘Just … she’s given to crying and fits of weeping. The earl and the countess, they can’t long endure her for it. Would a woman who has schemes of freedom and liberty be in the dumps so? Would she weep at the thought of getting herself free?’

  ‘A wicked woman would,’ he said. ‘A woman who can murder her husband and marry her fellow murderer can play at whatever she likes.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Amy. ‘That. I hear she hopes to be divorced from her husband.’

  Incongruously, a grin spread across Brown’s face. ‘Ha. The Scots will keep her chained to Bothwell until time runs out. They will recognise no divorce. If her hopes of Norfolk hang on that she is deceived. What else?’

  ‘She complains often of the draughts. And the smell of the privies.’ Brown rolled his eyes. ‘And … well, that man, Sandy. I heard him say that she should leave matters to faithful men. That was when she mentioned Queen Elizabeth. There was … it was the way he said it. I didn’t like the sound of it.’

  Brown nodded slowly, approvingly. ‘It’s as I thought. It’s as I’ve said. I’ve taken lodging in the town and since that wench’s coming hither her people have flooded it. Some of them speak openly of her being the rightful English queen.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means,’ he said, slamming a fist into his other palm, ‘that their design is to murder our sovereign lady. You must keep your ears open for whispers of that. If any plot can be proven it can be stopped. And if that whore knows of it, approves it, then, by God, we shall have the wolf by the ears.’

  6

  ‘Murder? By Christ’s codpiece, I … Jack!’ Heydon snapped his fingers before his eyes. ‘Jack Cole. Listen to me now. You can tell me later. You understand that by the Holy Father I can hear your confession and grant you penance. For this and … for anything you care to confess. But not now.’

  Dazedly, Jack’s eyes came into focus. Heydon was still speaking. ‘Right now, we have to figure out what to do about this.’

  ‘Is he dead?’ Jack heard his own voice. It was flat, detached, as though the bleeding man in front of him was a swatted fly.

  ‘Not yet. No.’ Heydon threw his hat on the bed and ran a hand through his hair. ‘We need to get him out of here. Away.’

  ‘Wait. We should wait until everyone’s gone away.’

  ‘Until the tapster has locked the front doors? Think, mate. Think!’

  Jack began to move. His legs were surprisingly steady. He stepped over to the man he had stabbed. ‘He’s bleeding.’ The blood, brown in the candlelight, was running over the floorboards. As it reached the edges it sank down between them and he imagined it dropping through the ceiling below.

  Heydon reached into the mess of stuff the dying man had upended from his pack and withdrew a shirt. ‘Jesus, but it kills me to do this,’ he said, before tearing off a strip. He dropped and walked on his knees over to the prone form. Then, biting his bottom lip, he pulled up the man’s doublet and shirt, revealing the wound. ‘Small. Deep.’

  ‘Ugghhahhh….’

  Both men flinched. Heydon set to work tying the strip of linen around the wound, knotting it above the hip. When it was tight, he took the rest of the shirt and mopped up the blood. Wadding it into a ball, he stuffed it down the man’s waistband, rifling through pockets. He produced some papers and skimmed them. ‘No name on these. But notes. On us, where we’ve been. Who we’ve spoken to. These will do him no good.’ He stuffed the papers under his own shirt. Then he eased off the man’s furred vest. ‘Better than mine,’ he said. ‘Do you want this?’

  ‘What? No, I … I couldn’t.’ Jack whitened, bringing a hand to his mouth.

  ‘Then I’ll have it. We should have been changing apparel now and again anyway.’ He pulled the man’s doublet back down where it had hiked up and then strode over to the open window, leaning out and down. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Bastard climbed in from the yard. On a barrel. Here, help me get him on his feet.’

  Jack stood irresolute for a few seconds before getting down on one knee and looping an arm under his left armpit. Heydon did the same on his right side, flinging the arm over his shoulder. ‘What are we doing, Philip?’

  ‘We have to walk him out. Downstairs. Make it look like we’re just a band of drunken friends.’

  ‘Through all them folk?’

  ‘Do you have a better way? Just … just let me take the lead.’

  Heydon nudged open the door and peeked out. Turning, he looked past the unconscious man between them and gave Jack a grim smile and a brief nod. ‘Let’s go.’

  The staircase could not fit three men abreast. They went down sideways, holding their victim up, his feet bobbing and scraping. Near the bottom, Heydon began laughing shrilly, punctuating the sound with snatches of song. Jack kept his head down. The crowd at the bottom barely parted and so he nudged through them. Occasional glances were thrown, not curious but annoyed. Still, Jack flinched under them and turned his eyes to the floor, where the man’s feet continued to sway and catch.

  ‘Your friend has a bit too much?’ said a middle-aged man, amusement on his features. ‘Get the bugger home before he pukes.’ Jack said nothing, but Heydon mumbled, ‘s’a just-a bit too much ta drink.’ He continued through the throng until he reached the door, throwing it wide and letting in a stiff breeze. Together they half-dragged the dying man out into the night. Using his foot, Jack hooked the door and pulled it closed, muffling the sounds of conversation and bawdry.

  ‘Stop,’ said Heydon, all trace of drunkenness gone. ‘I need a rest. Just a moment.’

  ‘What next?’ said Jack. ‘We can leave him here, can’t we? And just say he was killed by strangers?’

  ‘No. We’ve been seen together. Don’t want any watchmen with sharp eyes asking questions. We need to get him far away. But I can’t see how.’

  ‘The barrel,’ said Jack.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said he climbed into our chamber on a barrel.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well if it was sitting in the yard it should be empty. The tapster wouldn’t leave a full barrel sitting in the yard. I’ve seen how they do it in the duke’s household – and the earl’s. They lock up the full ones and leave out the empties and work them round.’

  A smile split Heydon’s features, barely visible in the moonlight and the ambience drifting from poorly-shuttered houses. ‘So we can get him in the barrel. Yes, and then we can roll it into the river. The Skerne isn’t far from here – just beyond the village.’

  ‘Will it take him away?’

  ‘I don’t know. Far enough away, I hope.’

  ‘But … is he dead yet?’

  ‘Who cares? We’ll leave the bunghole of the barrel open. If he’s not, he soon will be.’ Jack clenched his jaw and swallowed. ‘Better that than he lives to tell his tale. Do you want to hang, Jack Cole? Do you want to leave your wife widow to a murderer? A Catholic murderer?’

  ‘I’ll get the barrel,’ said Jack. ‘Here, let’s get him in there.’

  They dragged the body under the short archway that led into the tavern’s yard. Across the way were the shuttered stables. To Jack’s left stood a number of barrels. He spotted one under the window that he supposed was theirs. It was too dark to see, but he could feel the depressions in the mud where it had been moved. He tensed before easing it onto its side, knowing how deceptively heavy they were. Thankfully the lid came off with a couple of kicks – only a few nails secured it.

  Rolling it under the archway, Heydon and Jack folded the man up on his side, his knees to his chest, and forced him head-first inside. An arm flopped out and Heydon stamped on it. A crack rang out like a t
hunderclap. Jack closed his eyes briefly and shook his head, trying to chase the sound away. ‘There,’ said Heydon, nudging the broken limb inside with the tip of his boot. ‘Get the lid on. Doesn’t need to be on tight.’

  Working together, they secured the lid so that it fit snugly, but they made no attempt to nail it shut. ‘Now, the river.’ Heydon stood up straight and looked around, as though getting his bearings. ‘Right. We can’t keep to the streets. It’s over that way.’ He pointed behind the stables. We’ll have to go out and find a lane.’

  Taking an end of the barrel each, they began rolling it out onto the high street. Its new load made no noise other than soft bumps at it shifted. ‘This way,’ said Heydon, indicating towards their left. They moved off. It was slow going, slower than Jack had imagined rolling a barrel would be. Past the tavern, a number of timber buildings – part-shops, part-houses – were closely packed. Past them, on the left side of the street, they broke before the residential houses began. Between the two collections of buildings ran a little alleyway, bushes lining it on either side. They passed into it.

  ‘Who’s there?’ snapped a creaky voice. ‘Is someone there?’

  Both men froze. The voice – an old man’s – came from beyond the bushes to their right. A little light wobbled, moving from side to side. ‘I’ll call the watch.’ Jack looked at Heydon, his eyes wide. His friend raised a finger to his lips. After a while, a young female voice drifted over them.

  ‘What is it, dad?’

  ‘I thought I heard someone. After the chickens.’

  ‘It’ll be a fox. It won’t get them.’

  ‘Strange sounds for a fox.’

  ‘I can’t hear nothing. You’ve scared it off. Come inside, it’s still getting bitter at night. Look, you’re not even in your coat.’

  ‘Eeh, you’re right there, girl.’ The old man raised the light high again. ‘You hear that, foxy? The chickens are well tended here.’