The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez

by Ann Swinfen

  He was a kindly man, white-bearded, with deep-sunk eyes which gleamed with intelligence.

  ‘Good morning, Caterina,’ he said formally, leading me by the hand to a bench under an ornamental arch, heavy with the scent of yellow roses.

  There he quizzed me on Euclid and Ptolemy, then gave me some problems to solve. As I set about them, using the Moorish methods of handling unknown quantities and laying out what we call ‘equations’, he made approving noises. It seems I solved the problems to his satisfaction, for we moved on to a discussion of the universe, the latest theories of Dee and other mathematicians. It was then I first heard the name of Thomas Harriot, who was later to become my teacher. The Italian spoke also of new discoveries in optics, though my father explained I had not yet made any study of this subject. As the professor spoke, I thought of my strange experiences of perception that summer and wondered whether this new science might somehow explain them.

  After he had finished his examination, the Italian laid his hand on my head.

  ‘You have a good mind, Caterina, and you must take care always to study and nurture your intellect.’ He looked kindly into my eyes, but he sighed and shook his head. ‘’Tis pity you are a girl. It will be a kind of prison for you all your life.’

  The Italian dined with us that evening, and I was allowed to sit at table with my elders, which was not usually our practice at a formal dinner. I remember that my hair was elaborately looped with pearls, and I wore my finest gown, its stomacher stiff with embroidery (over which I had laboured long and bitterly the previous winter), sleeves ruched at the shoulders but so tight below I could hardly bend my arms, and a ruff, small but trimmed with delicate lace.

  The meal continued for a long time, our visitor and my father reminiscing about days long gone in Bologna, and I think my mother was as weary as I was when at last he left and we climbed the stairs, well past midnight. I was thankful to put on my shift, cool at last after my heavy clothes, which were so uncomfortable in the hot weather, and I lay on my bed with nothing, not even a sheet, over me. I thought the demands of the day and the rich meal would keep me awake, but I fell asleep as soon as I curled up on my side. It must have been three or four hours later when I woke to the pounding on the front door and the frantic barking of our dogs, which set off all the dogs in the neighbourhood, the barking spreading out from our house like the ripples when a stone is dropped into water, till far away the sound faded from hearing.

  That was when they came for us.

  Chapter Four

  The afternoon following the day that Poley took me to Walsingham’s house in Seething Lane, I received a message from Phelippes that I was to join him there and work until curfew. I had spent the morning at the hospital in a state of nervous unease, not knowing whether I would be summoned to the assistant superintendant of the hospital for instructions or reprimand, or whether Poley would appear to drag me off again.

  In the event, my morning’s work proceeded as normal and the message arrived by the hand of a middle-aged serving man as my father and I were at home, finishing our midday dinner. It seemed that whatever Sir Francis had done, it had all been arranged with quiet discretion. I was to continue to work in the hospital in the mornings and to spend the afternoons and early evenings as a code-breaker.

  That first afternoon Phelippes laid out for me several sheets containing known ciphers already in use by the conspirators in France and Spain, so that I could make my own copies. Some were quite subtle. Others so crude I found myself laughing aloud at them. Even Phelippes gave one of his small, brief smiles.

  ‘Indeed, a child could break them, Master Alvarez, but it saves time to have them in front of yourself while working.’

  I smiled back at him. He might be a tightly controlled man, meticulous and even fussy in everything he did, but he was neither unkind nor unfriendly.

  ‘Most people call me Kit,’ I said, offering it as a gesture of closer acquaintance.

  ‘Kit, then,’ he said, with a slight bow of his head. He did not invite me to call him Thomas, but I did not expect it, for he must have been twice my age.

  Once I had made copies of the captured ciphers, which he hinted had been entrusted to the same messenger who was to carry the letters from the French embassy to Chartley, he showed me two more he had compiled from the letters he had been working on since the packets had been delivered. These were complex and I had to admire his skill in breaking them.

  After that he gave me a packet containing ten sealed letters and showed me how to lift the seal with the fine blade of a knife so that the paper was neither marked nor torn. That way Arthur Gregory would be able to reseal them invisibly. And so I set to work on the undeciphered letters he entrusted to me. When I completed the first, which was in Spanish, and had made a fair copy in both Spanish and English, I carried my work over to Phelippes like a nervous schoolboy hoping for his master’s approval. The letter had been written in one of the known ciphers, so it had not been a difficult task, but I had completed it quickly and hoped for praise. However, Phelippes merely scanned the contents quickly, indicated where to place the original and the two transcriptions, and went back to his own work.

  A little disappointed, I sat down and lifted the seal off the next letter. However, I chided myself, I must not expect praise for every task I completed, like an anxious child. This was merely Phelippes’s daily work, no more notable for him than applying ointment to a burn would be for a doctor.

  By the time he dismissed me, half an hour before curfew, I had transcribed and translated six of the letters and felt satisfied with what I had accomplished. One of the letters had run to six pages, enumerating plans for Spanish invasion troops, but as it had been written eleven months earlier it hardly had much relevance now.

  I did wonder whether it was worth all the trouble of deciphering documents that were so out of date, but I supposed there might be some grain of information to be found in them – the name of a conspirator unknown before or promises of support from some traitor at home which must be investigated. Somehow I had always imagined that the activities of Walsingham’s network, shrouded in mystery and whispered gossip, must be as exciting as storytellers’ tales of adventurous derring-do. It had not occurred to me that much of it took place in cramped rooms hunched over ill-written scribbles which must be de-coded symbol by painful symbol. Yet I was beginning to understand that battles may be won and nations protected by just such quiet labour undertaken by anonymous men.

  My father had accepted that I could not discuss with him the secret nature of my work at Walsingham’s house, but he was concerned for my physical well-being. When I returned that first evening I was exhausted from the demanding work by candlelight, for the winter dark had come down early. As well, I was hungry, for I had eaten little at midday, from sheer nerves, and I had been given nothing to eat or drink while I was with Phelippes.

  ‘You must not let this work undermine you,’ my father said. ‘Did they not even give you to drink?’

  I shook my head and wiped my lips with the back of my hand. I had drunk deeply from a pot of small ale and felt the better for it.

  ‘We were so busy.’ I found I was making excuses for my new task-master. ‘There was no time to eat or drink. Master Phelippes took nothing either.’

  My father set down a plate of mutton seethed with barley and onions in front of me. ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘Your body is still young and needs nourishment. If this is to be the pattern of your days, you must make sure to eat well at noon, or you will over task your strength.’

  I said nothing, but smiled at him and fell upon the food, realising just how hungry I was. He sat down opposite me with his own plate and began to eat, while watching me closely.

  ‘You cannot talk about your work, that I understand, but there is nothing dishonourable in it, is there?’

  I swallowed a large mouthful and shook my head. ‘No, Father. It is just code-breaking documents concerned with the safety of the nation. You would think it ho
nourable. We may not be English ourselves, but this is our home and the safety of England matters as much to us as to any Englishman.’

  He nodded his satisfaction and poured more ale for me.

  That first day established the pattern of my life for many days to come. Hospital work in the morning, a substantial meal at home, then the walk across London to Seething Lane and work in Phelippes’s office until after dark and the walk home. I did not much enjoy that walk home alone through the dark streets of London and kept to the busier ways, where substantial houses and business premises kept torches alight beside their doors. The narrow unlit alleyways and closes were unsafe even by daylight. After dark they were treacherous with cut-purses and worse. My father had given me a fine Spanish dagger of his own to wear at my belt, although I am not sure how well I would have been able to defend myself, had I been attacked.

  The tottering stacks of accumulated letters gradually diminished until one evening we finished the last of them. Phelippes stretched his arms above his head and flexed his fingers. My own fingers were blackened with ink. I would need to scrub them hard with pumice stone before attending any patients in the morning.

  Arthur Gregory came in to collect the last half dozen letters.

  ‘The courier came earlier, Master Phelippes. Shall I send the boy for him?’

  ‘Aye.’ Phelippes removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes, as he often did when he was tired.

  While Arthur went to find the messenger boy to fetch the courier, I tidied my desk, throwing my rough papers on the fire and stirring them with the poker until they were entirely consumed. The fair copies of all our transcriptions would be placed in Sir Francis’s files under lock and key, while no rough draft must be left lying about where it might find its way into the wrong hands. Though I knew Phelippes locked his office every night, he, like Sir Francis, was obsessed with security and secrecy.

  ‘Will you want me tomorrow?’ I asked, not sure what my position was to be, now that we had worked our way through those great stacks of letters.

  ‘No, no. There will be no need for you to come tomorrow.’ He stood up and began to straighten his own desk. Like me, he burned his working papers, which were covered with his minute handwriting in ruler-straight lines. I have never seen such small writing at any other time in my life. I could barely read it.

  ‘When I have need of your help again, I will send for you, Kit. There will be more work, certainly, but – I hope – never such a mountain as we have just tackled. I thank you for your help.’

  ‘I was glad to help, sir,’ I said, realising that I meant it.

  As I slung my cloak round my shoulders – for it was still cold outside – Arthur returned with another young man. He was well-dressed and personable, certainly from his demeanour he was a gentleman. This must be the courier who was trusted by the traitors in France and at home, but who was working for Sir Francis. He gave me a brief nod, which I returned, then went into Arthur’s cubbyhole to collect his packet of letters. It was the first time we had crossed paths and we were not introduced, but I had once overhead Arthur referring to him as ‘Gifford’. Still, it was better for me to know nothing about him. I wished Phelippes good-night and made my way down to back stairs on my way home.

  ‘Give way, there!’

  A government official with a train of half a dozen armed men clattered south into London, and I shrank back into a doorway. I had been walking up Bishopsgate Street admiring the fine inns which line it, greater in number and grander than almost anywhere in London: the Black Bull, the Green Dragon, the Angel, the Four Swans, the Wrestlers, the Peahen, the Vine. They were all doing good business, though it was not yet mid-day. Round the corner in Camomile Street were the White Horse and the Saracen’s Head, and, further along, the Golden Axe.

  It is not only the traffic coming into London from the north-east which brings these inns their business, but the two playhouses a mile or so beyond the gate, the Curtain and the Theatre. The tenter fields lie out here as well, stretching away north and west of the wall, forming the southern part of Finsbury Fields, with its windmills and archery butts. So the audiences coming thirsty out of the playhouses, or the tenters waiting for their cloth to dry, or the young men who have been practising at the butts, all drop into one of these inns, so temptingly displaying their painted signs or ancient bushes along the road back into London.

  ‘You must take this tincture,’ my father said, ‘to a woman brought to bed with child three days ago. Her husband trades in Houndsditch.’

  ‘What ails her?’ I asked.

  ‘She has bled more than she should, and the midwife has sent to me for help. She is young and healthy. With God’s aid this should slow the bleeding.’

  At the same moment, it seemed, we were both stabbed with memory. I picked up the stoppered phial and turned away without a word.

  Some of the poorer members of our community lived in Shoreditch, outside the City walls, beyond Bishopsgate, and this was where I was now headed. At the corner of Houndsditch and Bishopsgate-Street-Without stood the Dolphin Inn, the great gathering place for the farmers and carters from Norfolk and Suffolk bringing their animals and goods into London. The Dolphin boasted that it could lodge and feed two or three hundred people and their horses at a moment’s notice, and so long was its southern wall along Houndsditch that I could easily believe the claim. Against the outside of this wall were built clusters of small and rather shabby shops, some hardly more than market booths, others ramshackle houses, mostly not more than one room deep, with the shop at street level and lodging for the shopkeeper and his family above.

  As I came through the City wall at Bishopsgate, I found myself surrounded by a flock of some hundreds of geese, herded by a man and two boys who must have walked them here from Norfolk. I backed away and pressed against the time-worn stones of the wall so they could pass, my fingers digging into the moss and lichen that spotted the rough surface with their spongy cushions. Despite their long journey, the birds had abated not one whit of their malice. Their vicious necks darted out at me like snakes, and their hissing was like snakes, too, the snakes that sometimes we would see on the fringes of the forest of Buçaco. The pigs from my grandfather’s farm always jumped aside from the snakes as I jumped from the geese. Their cold eyes watched me as they waddled painfully on their tarred feet through the gate and into London. They would be kept a while to be fattened up, having lost much of their flesh in the long walk, before being sold off at Smithfield.

  The small Marrano community lay to the right beyond the gate, eastwards along Houndsditch. On the other side of the main road, to the left, just before Bedlam hospital where they keep the madmen, a narrow causeway clings to the southern brick wall of St Botolph’s churchyard, leading to an area which people had lately started to call Petty France, for it thronged with French Huguenots.

  ‘Some builder with an eye to his own enrichment,’ said my father, ‘and little care for his fellow creatures, has seized the chance to build ramshackle tenements five or six storeys high on that strip of ground, where those poor refugees huddle, whole families to a single room, and carry on their trades of weaving silk and fine fabrics.’

  Because they were so crowded together, the refuse from the Huguenot houses and businesses was beginning to choke the flow of water in the city ditch. There had been complaints and threats from their English neighbours, who did not care to have this foreign community thrust in amongst them.

  Where the geese had passed, the ground was spattered with green droppings, through which I picked my way to the crowded thoroughfare of Houndsditch. The street was wide and paved, but busy. First there were the secondhand clothing stalls, where dirty crones plucked and pawed at the mounds of garments even dirtier than they, which gave off a rank smell of illness and death. Another group of wizened dames, indistinguishable from the first, bargained with the stallholders to buy the contents of the baskets they carried. If a dead man were left unattended even for a short while, the word would s
pread amongst these women and they would have every stitch of clothing off him, sheets, bed-hangings and all, and it would be on sale here before the relatives returned to wash the corpse for burial. Their high-pitched, arguing voices, their cold eyes and darting heads reminded me of the geese, and I hurried to pass them by.

  The din in the street made my head ache. There was the constant clanging from the metal-workers’ shops, the shouting of the stallholders, the hammering from half a dozen carpenters. The sweet perfume of new-sawn wood mingled with the dung of the street and the hellish scent of molten iron from the foundry. There were tailors here, too, sitting cross-legged at their open shop fronts to gain the benefit of sunlight, while they stitched on new cloth, fresh and pleasant after the rags at the far end of the street. Upholsterers, with their mouths full of brass tacks, tapped away with small, round-headed hammers, securing Barcheston tapestry or glossy brocade to chairs for the wealthy, to satisfy the new fashion for cushioned furniture. They themselves no doubt sat to dine on bare benches.

  At last I found the house I wanted, at the sign of the Black Boy. It was a secretive shop, and I entered hesitantly. At first I could make out nothing in the gloom, then I saw two people talking quietly at the back of the narrow room. One I recognised as the husband of the woman I sought, for I had seen him at services in the synagogue. The other, a slight, fair-haired youth, had his back to me. I waited by the door until they had concluded their business, for Manoel de Barros was a pawnbroker, and such business was often delicate. When the young man turned at last toward the door, I realised that I knew him.

  ‘Kit!’ he cried, ‘Kit Alvarez!’ And he seized me by the hand as though he was glad to see me, and not one jot embarrassed at being caught in a pawnbroker’s shop.