‘And beat me now, I’m sure,’ said Becket sadly. ‘But you see why I am not so eager to introduce you to Walsingham. He’ll have you writing to him with intelligence before you know it.’
‘More than ever I am glad that father remembered you in his will. At least you will not be scraping for money any more.’
It was a comfortable thought. And he did feel better, it was true, to find that Philip was still on his side. Although the poor man looked older still.
He patted Philip’s knee to reassure him, called the potboy over and asked for the reckoning and a receipt, since it was occasionally possible to get your money back from Walsingham’s clerk, Phelippes – if you docketed everything in writing.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. ‘Only keep well out of any matter of Walsingham’s, for what will I say to Eleanor if you turn pursuivant?’
* * *
They took a boat downriver in the morning, so that Philip could enjoy the sight of the river frontage with the Palace of Westminster and the rich men’s gardens and then the fine ships in the Pool. They landed at Temple steps so that Philip could go up the lane and see his lawyer and man of business, Peregrine Howard, while Becket walked up Ludgate Hill and into the City. He had thought long and hard what to do about his discovery that Burghley was still selling ordnance overseas, eclipsed though it had been in his eyes by Piers Lammett’s information about the Miracle of Beauty.
In the end, he left a package containing all his information for Thomasina de Paris at Dr Nunez’ house in Poor Jewry, marked for the Queen’s eyes only. And then he took the same report to Walsingham, similarly marked, without mentioning his other conduit to the Queen. He thought it was an experiment the Queen might enjoy, whatever the result.
He was just leaving to join his brother for dinner, when he was grabbed by Phelippes the younger in great relief and asked to go and meet some Dutchman called Van Groenig at the Belle Sauvage in Ludgate, on account of his speaking Dutch.
‘Send Munday,’ growled Becket.
‘Speaks no Dutch,’ said Phelippes. ‘Or I would, believe me, Mr Becket.’
‘What’s so urgent about it?’
Phelippes squinted at a piece of paper. ‘Claims to be Parma’s mapmaker. Says he has vital information about a plot against the Queen and the realm. The usual.’
Becket sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘Not again?’
Phelippes smiled in his prosiac, lips-tucked fashion. ‘I am afraid so.’
‘How many this month?’
‘Twenty-two.’
‘His letter?’
Phelippes handed it over and Becket assessed it with an expertise he was unaware of. The handwriting was good, the Dutch literate, no great whirligigs of hyperbole about how very dangerous and important and unique the information was. It had not been penned in blood and no angels had dictated it, which was a relief.
‘All must at least be seen,’ said Phelippes unnecessarily. ‘And my father particularly asked that it be you. Van Groenig takes his dinner at the Belle Sauvage every midday…’
‘Sensible of him. I like their bag puddings.’
‘Their hard sauce of sack and butter also is excellent,’ murmured Phelippes. ‘I recommend it with the almond pudding. And I shall, of course, see to your expenses myself.’
Becket sighed.
The first Philip knew of the enterprise was his brother banging through the door of the Cheshire Cheese and beckoning him over.
‘If you want to be a pursuivant, you can see what I spend my days doing,’ Becket said, heading up the alley towards Fleet Street. ‘Wasting my days, if you like. Every madman in Europe with angels sitting whispering on his shoulder, every single one comes to London with divine knowledge of Parma’s plans. And Walsingham says we have to talk to each one, just in case there might be something in it.’
‘Well, mightn’t there be?’
‘You have evidently not spoken to as many Protestant madmen as I have,’ said his brother heavily.
Philip felt his brother was very ill-suited to be a pursuivant. As far as he could make out, Becket mishandled the interview with Van Groenig at the Belle Sauvage. For a start, he marched straight up to the squat man in an unmistakeably German doublet who sat with his back in a corner, by a window onto the great courtyard where the carrier’s wagons made ready for their journeys up the Great North Road every morning.
Becket loomed over him deliberately and spoke in a bored tone of voice. ‘Mijnheer Van Groenig?’
‘Have you got the money?’ asked the man in a heavy Low Dutch accent, munching away on a piece of pie.
Becket said something in Dutch. Groenig gave him an ugly look, snarled something in the same language and then continued to speak English. ‘I told you. First the money, then the story. Parma is look for me. To hide, I must money have. I want your Valseenam protect me.’
Becket put his hand on the table and leaned in. ‘I don’t buy no pigs in pokes, nothing I haven’t seen. I’ve been caught that way before.’
Van Groenig shrugged, stolidly continued to eat his steak and kidney pie.
‘Shall I speak to Mr Munday about you?’ hissed Becket. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t been arrested and taken to meet Mr Rackmaster Norton.’
‘I also,’ Van Groenig sneered. ‘So why not? I also would do that.’ He looked theatrically round the room. ‘Oh, you have no men. So sit down, Mijnheer Priest Hunter.’
Becket sat down, while Philip stood over in the corner, trying to hear what was going on without staring or seeming to eavesdrop. He thought he would at least have tried to be pleasant first.
‘You listen,’ said Van Groenig, making a face as he drank the beer, ‘not threaten. What I sell is worth the kingdom, understand? The kingdom.’
‘Parma’s secret plans for invasion?’ asked Becket, his eyes half shut, his voice heavy with disbelief.
Van Groenig flushed angrily. ‘It happens, ja.’
Becket sighed. ‘And you want for this…?’
‘Fifty pounds. Gold.’
‘Oh. Is that all?’
‘Is a bargain for a kingdom, even yours. It is, how you say, good cheap?’
‘Who told you the plan?’
‘Nobody. I find it by my work.’
Becket rolled his eyes.
‘You not believe me?’
‘Mijnheer, put yourself in my place. Why should I believe you? Ever since last summer, I have had one madman after another try to sell me Parma’s secret plans for invading his realm. My master would certainly pay fifty pounds for such information, but not for some lunatic’s phantastical spew.’
Van Groenig’s lips shut tight. ‘I not a lunatic.’
‘Having once been very good friends with a lunatic, I can assure you that they never admit what they are. Nor even know it, maybe. So please, Mr Van Groenig, convince me. Help me. What, for instance, is your trade?’
‘I am a scholar, a geographer and a cartographer.’
‘A mapmaker? So what?’
‘I make maps. I go to a place, a city, I walk around, I count my steps, I sit on a hill and sketch. Later, I make a map. I am very good mapmaker.’
‘Who for?’
Van Groenig smiled. ‘For who pays good money. For Cunning Prince Wilhelm before the priest shot him. For the Duc d’Anjou. For Parma.’
‘Who’s paying you now?’
‘No one. I am look for a patron.’
‘Why are you talking to me?’
‘Mijnheer Priest Hunter, to work for Spain is hungry business. He promise much, but he not pay. Give me gold and I am your Queen’s mapmaker.’
‘We don’t need a map of London. We know our way around.’
Van Groenig smiled again. ‘I have for Parma a map made, a very secret map. So secret, instead of pay me, he try for arrest me.’
‘A map of what?’
‘A city, natürlich. But of where? A-ha. Money first.’
Becket sighed. ‘I have no authority to pay you, Mr Van Groenig.
Nor do I have a pound of gold on me, leave alone fifty of them.’
Van Groenig slapped his hand on the table in disgust. ‘Why should I with the boy speak when I have information for the master. You go tell your master,’ a broad, ink-stained finger prodded Becket’s doublet, ‘you go tell your Valseenum, if he does not to me listen, Parma eats his liver next summer.’
And Van Groenig turned away and ostentatiously filled his mouth with kidney and piecrust.
Becket stumped away from the table and sat next to Philip, calling for ale. Philip had philosophically ordered some pie for both of them, which Becket began to demolish at speed.
Philip thought they should go to Seething Lane again to report, but Becket thought not. Instead they finished their food, then left the room, but waited by the great gate of the inn until the Dutchman left.
He stamped out of the common room door shortly after and they followed him discreetly. It wasn’t difficult. Van Groenig seemed too angry to pay much attention to what was behind him, although he had scanned the street before he started. That worried Philip. Disappointment made sense, if the man was a fraud, but not anger. Becket only grunted when he pointed this out.
Van Groenig had lodgings in the small rents to the north of the Strand. They waited outside as the Dutchman bought himself an apple and raisin pasty on credit from a stallholder, went upstairs. They heard the bang of his door.
Becket rubbed his face wearily, scratched the margins of his beard, which needed trimming. He could have changed his shirt that morning as well. Eleanor had given him three that had once been his father’s and were wide enough. Philip changed his shirt every second day.
‘Perhaps he should be picked up,’ Becket said meditatively. ‘I don’t like him running around loose if Parma is after him, and Anthony Munday may be better at prising him open than I am.’
‘Is Munday a friend of yours?’
‘No, I told you, he’s an inquisitor.’ Becket’s chin dropped to his regrettable falling-band, and his voice rumbled. ‘Not my friend.’
Philip remembered then when he had heard the name before and could have kicked himself. Do you have any friends, David? he wanted to ask, but didn’t.
Becket rubbed his face again. Sighed. ‘God curse it, the butter-eater has me half-convinced. Do you know where Seething Lane is, Philip?’
Philip looked around wildly at the choked, winding streets. ‘If you could tell me…’
Becket scowled. ‘I’ll run to Walsingham and tell them to pick him up. You stay here.’
‘What shall I do if he leaves?’
‘I doubt he will but if he does, don’t try to follow him, you’ll only lose him and yourself. Mark which direction he goes in, but then stay here to tell me when I come back.’
Philip nodded uncertainly and Becket jogged off through the crowds, hand tilting his sword to keep it out of his way and his sheer size cutting him a passage. Philip watched him go, worried that he wouldn’t know what to do if something happened.
He sat down, called for ale, tried to pretend he was not watching the house across the street. There was no sign of the Dutchman but someone else came out of the door, a young man with brown hair and an open, handsome face in a well-cut grey suit of fine wool, trimmed with black braid. There was something that obscurely worried Philip about him, what was it? Not that he was whistling something, not the jaunty way he walked, nor the pallor of his face, nor the way he paused briefly to look at some elderly fish displayed on a street stall and then hurried on. He looked over his shoulder and their eyes met, briefly. What was it about him? His hands moved obscurely under his cloak, putting something away.
Unnamed instinct got Philip off the bench, over to the small street door. The stairs were narrow and turned as they went up.
‘Good day?’ he called. ‘Um … anyone there?’
No answer. And what was that dark drop on the muddy board in front of him?
Philip climbed the stairs two at a time, went through the open door, into the small room with its bare paint-plaster walls, its overstuffed bed with the dusty curtains, the table, the chest which was open and the contents scattered, the stout body of a man sprawled on the rushes …
Van Groenig had his mouth open, he was snorting like a pig. Philip bent over him, wondering what was wrong. There was no obvious wound, no blood …
One eye rolled to focus on Philip, the other … Oh Jesus, the other eye was full of blood and something grey and creamy … Oh God …
Philip put his hand over his mouth, swallowing sourness. The other eye rolled, the one that wasn’t a deep pond of blood and brain, fixed on him, struggled to see.
‘Ka … Het is kaaa …’ said Van Groenig desperately, caught at Philip, gripping hard. ‘Ka.’
His head went back, the undestroyed eye blackened, became jelly, his spine contracted, jolted, his legs worked as if he was trying to run away from death.
Philip stepped back unsteadily. That was what he had glimpsed. The young man had been carefully wiping a knife under his short cloak …
He stumbled down the stairs, his head almost bursting, his guts working. It was like a dream. What could he do? He squinted desperately down the street, saw no sign of the young man in any direction, no sign that anyone had even noticed. He stumbled one way, then another. Nothing. But he had to do something to settle his stomach, and Becket had told him to wait. So he went back to the alehouse opposite, ordered aqua vitae, swallowed the greasy fluid in one gulp and nearly puked again because it was so bad.
He sat there, staring and sweating, the picture of Van Groenig sweeping across his mind unbidden every second moment, wondering what the hell to do, until his brother jogged up, breathing hard and gripped his shoulder.
‘Munday will be here with pursuivants in a quarter hour, we can … Philip? What is it?’
Philip looked up at his brother mutely. I’m sorry, David, he wanted to say except his mouth was too dry, I’m not used to seeing things like that.
Becket spun on his heel, crossed the street like a bear going after a dog in the bearpit, was up the stairs and into the room with Philip behind him, wanting obscurely to prevent his younger brother seeing anything so nasty … Stupid of him.
He cannoned into his brother’s broad back as Becket stood just inside the door.
‘God rot it,’ said Becket, taking it all in wearily. ‘God rot it to hell and damnation.’
In five minutes he had searched the cooling body and the room, under the mattress on the bed, opening the seams of the mattress and the pillows, checked the chest for a false bottom, kicked through Van Groenig’s shirts and netherhose lying scattered on the thin old rushes. He sat down on the bed, making it creak, spotted something that had rolled against the wall. He bent and picked it up, held it to the light. ‘French coin,’ he said, ‘a pistole, I think.’
‘He must have been—’
‘Ay,’ rumbled Becket, shutting his eyes. ‘Perhaps he was telling the truth. Somebody thought so. Did you see who did it?’
‘A young man came out of the place, dressed in dark grey wool … um … Hat. Brown hair. Ruff. Er … short cloak. Long pale face.’
‘Would you know him again? Draw a picture of him? You’re good at limning.’
Philip frowned. ‘Perhaps. Yes, I could.’
‘Watch out for him. Did he see you?’
‘I think so, though I didn’t know then … I just wondered who he was.’
‘Did Van Groenig say anything to you before he died?’
‘No,’ said Philip, wanting to forget everything about what he had seen, the one eye staring at him, the other eye destroyed. ‘He tried, but it was Dutch … It sounded like ‘cat’ or ‘can’ but he couldn’t say it. I’m sorry, David.’
‘And you didn’t see the young man go in?’
‘No.’
‘Must have been waiting for him. Yes. Mapmaker. Perhaps recently in France if the pistole didn’t come from someone else, like the assassin. Damn it.’
‘
Walsingham should have paid the fifty pounds.’
‘Oh, he would have, Philip. I was going to recommend it. Come on. There’s no maps here.’
He pushed past Philip, clattered halfway down the stairs.
‘Should we not wait for your … for Mr Munday? For the Watch and the magistrates and the inquest and—’
‘Hell with the lot of them,’ said Becket, shocking him with his lack of responsibility. ‘Mr Recorder Fleetwood can sort it out with Munday. Besides, they might arrest you for the crime. You were here at the time, after all.’
Philip gasped though he couldn’t fault the logic. He followed Becket back down the narrow stairs.
* * *
It was not as shocking as all that, for after a while of hurrying through London at a jog-trot behind his brother, Philip realised that Becket was calling out his affinity, in much the same way he himself would have done at Middleton if there had been a band of sturdy beggars in the area or a mysterious murder done. Except his brother’s affinity seemed to consist mainly of the kind of people Philip would call out his own affinity against. First Becket stopped at Temple Bar and grabbed one of the sore-covered beggars waving a bowl at a hurrying lawyer. He spoke quite softly in the man’s ear and then left him. They went up Ludgate Hill to Paul’s Churchyard and caught a boy in a ragged wool suit who was trying to convince some farmers that Duke Humphrey’s tomb was filled up with gold and jewels and if they paid him a penny each, he would use his influence to get them in to see it. Becket muttered in his ear and gave him a penny. The boy nodded nervously.
They took a boat from Temple steps and visited what Philip was sure was a stews on the South Bank where Becket seemed on worryingly friendly terms with the Madam and then called in on the famous bear-baiting ring where Philip was introduced to both Harry Hunks and Tom of Lincoln, both of whom seemed polite enough gentlemen, if extremely hairy and smelly. Harry Hunks roared when he saw Becket and Becket took the orangeado full of sugar he had bought from a pie woman on the corner and lobbed it into Harry Hunks’s cage. The bear picked up the orangeado and sat with it in his paws, snuffling and licking away. Philip smiled to see it.
‘I always bring him something,’ Becket explained half-shamefaced. ‘He’s an old friend of mine. Saved my life a couple of years back, though he’s grown old and long in the tooth now, if he had any, that is.’ He talked intently to the bearwarden and the ticket seller.
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