by Ann Swinfen
‘You would not really wish to go back to Portugal, would you, Father?’ I asked when we reached home and let ourselves in quietly. Joan slept in a little cubbyhole off the kitchen. If we woke her she would be slamming pots and pans about tomorrow.
‘It would be good to see the Spanish driven out,’ he said, not answering my question.
‘But you would not go back?’
‘I do not think there is any likelihood of Portugal being rescued from Spain through an expedition led by Ruy Lopez,’ he said with a laugh.
That was still not an answer to my question. The fear that he might even consider it made me shiver.
‘Go to bed, Kit,’ he said. ‘You are asleep where you stand.’
A little girl, perhaps five or six years old, was brought in to the hospital the next morning. Peter Lambert carried her in and laid her on a cot at the end of one of the wards.
‘See here, Kit,’ said my father, ‘she has been bitten by one of those street curs that roam about Smithfield, living off the gutter scraps. The animal cannot have been rabid, or she would have been dead before she reached us.’
But the wound was nasty, a great torn and jagged place in her thigh, and it had become infected. The parents had called in some unlicensed apothecary, who had bled the child, thereby weakening her further. My father’s methods were advanced, as were those of most of the medical school at Coimbra. He did not believe in bleeding for serious wounds, despite Dr Stevens’s conviction that bleeding was the only way to cleanse the blood of any infection. He handed the child over to my care and I sent Peter to fetch the medicines I needed.
I began by cleaning out the wound with tincture of calendula officinalis, then applied a compress of plantago major and salved it with eupatorium cannabium, both of which counteract infection.
The child was unconscious with a high fever, but even so she writhed and screamed as I worked. I hate to hurt a patient, above all to hurt a child.
My hands were shaking, but I knew I must do this. An infected wound would bring her more pain. Probably death. My stomach churned and my own flesh flinched as I wiped the raw wound clear of pus and dirt.
When the wound was finally cleansed to my satisfaction, I left it open to the air, burning the stinking dressing which had covered it, and I sat up with her two nights, giving her drinks of cooling herbs and bathing her whole body with febrifuge tinctures to reduce the fever.
The first night she remained lost in the darkness of that fever, but around the middle of the second night, when the church bells were chasing each other down the air with their twelve brazen strokes, she half woke.
‘Mama!’ she cried, ‘Mama!’
Her eyes glittered in her flushed face, and her hair, dark with sweat, clung to her forehead in flattened curls.
I gathered her on to my lap and rocked her gently. On a stool beside the bed I kept a basin of the cooling tincture, with which I sponged her face and then her burning body. It seemed to ease her a little, though she gave pitiful cries still for her mother and mumbled incoherent words.
When I had done bathing her, I wrapped her in a light sheet and cradled her in my arms. She was stiff with pain and fever.
‘Hush now, my pet,’ I whispered. ‘Listen.’
We had placed her cot behind a screen, but there were other patients sleeping in the long ward, so I kept my voice low as I sang softly the lullabies our nurse had comforted us with when we were small. Gradually her body relaxed into mine and her head rested against my shoulder. She was a frail little thing, with shoulder blades trying to break through her skin, thin and sharp as incipient wings. But her spirit was strong and fought to hold on to life.
On the third day she fell into a deep natural sleep, and on the fourth she woke and cried for food. The wound was still far from healing, but it was clean and sweet and the skin had begun to draw together. She would have a scar for the rest of her life, but it would be well hidden by her skirts.
‘Good work,’ said Peter, when he came with me to hand the child back to her parents a week later. ‘I did not think she would live.’
Alys – for that was her name – clung to my hand as we walked towards the gate. I grinned at Peter. Since the day when we had cared for Sir Jonathan Langley, I had worked with him more often. He would make a fine apothecary when his apprenticeship was finished.
Alys’s parents were waiting just inside the gate. From the fine white dust ingrained in his skin and the small scars peppering his hands, I took it that her father was a stonemason. Her mother was small and thin, a little wisp of a woman, but I could see that she could barely contain herself from running forward.
‘Mama!’ Alys cried, slipping from my hand and rushing into her mother’s arms.
‘We’re that grateful to you, doctor,’ the man said, and there were tears in his eyes. ‘She’s our only one that lived.’
I mumbled something in reply, aware of an ache as I watched Alys clinging to her mother. Then, as they turned away, she suddenly ran back and clutched me about the knees.
‘God be with you, Dr Kit,’ she whispered.
I knelt down on the paving stones and hugged her.
‘And with you, Alys. And stay away from the street dogs!’
‘You did well with the child,’ my father said, as we sat together in our small parlour that evening.
I smiled at him.
‘That is why we are given our skill, isn’t it, Father? To heal the sick and restore them to life?’
I noticed then – I had been too preoccupied with the child to notice before – that he was looking tired. More than that, he seemed exhausted. My absence working for Phelippes, particularly the long hours of late, had thrown a much greater burden on him. I think that was the first time I fully realised that my father was growing old. He had been past forty when I was born, so now he was nearing sixty, and what he had endured at the hands of the Inquisition had surely shortened his life.
In the days that followed I tried to take over more and more of his work, to spare him, and I urged upon Joan the necessity of feeding him well. Between us we contrived to ensure that he ate two good meals of meat a day, and he began to look a little less worn.
However much I would have liked to spend more time relieving my father of some of his burden of work, Phelippes still needed me. When Dr Stevens returned to the hospital he required a cane to lean upon, but at least he was able to resume the care of most of his patients. Once again I was working at St Bartholomew’s in the mornings and spending the afternoons at Seething Lane. Phelippes was troubled by the fact that the conspiracy headed in England by Sir Anthony Babington was not progressing in the way he expected. Sir Anthony, it seemed, was developing cold feet. Despite the fact that he was a married man with a young child, he was expressing a wish to travel abroad.
‘In order to widened his education, he says!’ Phelippes was contemptuous. ‘He is four and twenty. If he had wanted to travel in Europe and see the sights of ancient Rome, he should have gone five or six years ago, at the age when most young gentlemen travel. Rome! I know where he will be headed in Rome. Straight to that hotbed of treason, the college for English priests. And he has the effrontery to ask Sir Francis for a licence to travel abroad for three years!’
‘It does seem strange,’ I said cautiously. ‘Not long married, and with a baby. He would leave his wife and child in England?’
‘Of course. He could hardly pursue his education with a woman and child tagging at his heels.’ Phelippes’s voice was sour with sarcasm.
‘But,’ I said, not quite sure why Phelippes was so heated, ‘will this not mean the Queen will be safe and the threat of an invasion will be over?’
He gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Have you learned nothing, Kit? We want this conspiracy to go forward. For once we have all the threads in our hands. We know the principal players and their strengths and weaknesses. We know where the money is coming from. We know which ports they will attempt to use during an invasion and have installed cove
rt forces there to withstand them. We are intercepting every letter in and out of Chartley, every communication with the Scottish queen, as you very well know. Up to now she has been very careful with what she, or her secretaries, put on paper, but with every week that passes, they become a little more confident, a little more careless. It is unlikely that we will ever again be in a position to have everything under our control as we have now. Of course we want the conspiracy to go forward!’
Under this blast of reasoning, I bowed my head. I had never seen the quiet and prudent Thomas Phelippes so passionate, but I understood that if all his work of the last months were to fall apart, he had some reason for passion.
He had been prowling about the room as he lectured me, but now he sat down abruptly at his desk.
‘And I will tell you something even more ironic, Kit. For a short time Sir Francis even believed he could turn Babington, persuade him to work for us. I managed to put a stop to that idea.’
‘A double agent?’ I said weakly. I was having difficulty keeping up with all this, for I had not been aware of some of the details of the conspiracy Phelippes had been listing.
‘Aye, if you like. A double agent. But it would have been much too risky. Babington is genuinely a devout Catholic, not like Gifford, who comes from an old Catholic family but does not have a scrap of religious faith in his bones. Moreover, Babington has a puppy-like devotion to the Scots queen. He was a page in Shrewsbury’s household when Shrewsbury was her guardian, and he saw her as a maiden in distress, like some damsel locked away in a tower in a tale of chivalry and knightly prowess! The truth is, she is a scheming harpy with her eye on the English throne, now that the French and the Scots have thrown her out. And her enormous household has been eating up the Queen’s substance for years. Maiden in distress!’ He snorted in contempt.
‘So what is to be done?’ I asked hesitantly. I was not sure whether Phelippes was using me merely to work off his fury, or whether there was some other purpose behind all this.
‘In the first place, we have told Poley to lead him by the nose for the moment. Keep him corresponding with the Scottish woman, but also keep the door to Walsingham open a crack. The latest plan is for Babington’s band of heroes to attack Chartley and free Mary, while a group of assassins, including Savage, attack and murder the Queen. At the same time the invaders will land and march on London, unimpeded by any English army, because, of course, we know nothing about all this. If a nervous Babington thinks he can always back out at the last minute and reveal all to Walsingham, then he is more likely to carry on with his hare-brained schemes.’
‘I see. And Sir Francis’s purpose in all this is?’
‘The purpose is to trap Mary when she admits she is a party to this. She has been a party to other conspiracies, but she has been clever enough to conceal the evidence. This time, she is on the brink of revealing herself. Then, under the Instrument of Association, which she has signed, and the Act for the Queen’s Surety, she is guilty of treason.’
‘I see,’ I said again, and this time I did see. So this was what Walsingham and Phelippes were working for, what all this web of intrigue and observation was intended to entrap. By watching every move, but waiting and not showing their hand, they hoped that Mary would drop her guard.
‘Are there any letters to decipher today, Master Phelippes? Because if not . . .’
‘No, Sir Francis wants to see you. He should be back from Whitehall Palace by now. Come with me and we will see whether he is in his office.’
Sir Francis must just have arrived, for he was standing and sorting through the papers on his desk.
‘Ah, come in, Thomas, Kit. Have you explained to him yet, Thomas?’
‘No, Sir Francis. I thought you wished to do so yourself.’
‘Very well. Sit down, both of you.’ He settled himself behind his desk.
‘Kit, we have both been very pleased with the work you have done here. You also managed the business at Hartwell Hall admirably. As far as we can tell, your sudden departure aroused no suspicions and you enabled us to take control of another courier route.’
I inclined my head. I was not sure where this was leading, but I dreaded that it might be a preliminary to sending me on another mission like the one to the Fitzgeralds. I had managed the deception once, for just a week. I did not think I could do it again.
‘As I am sure you must have become aware, Thomas and I have to work with some very disreputable and unreliable people – liars, traitors, double agents. You have convinced us of your decency and honesty. Moreover, you have your own thoroughly respectable profession of medicine, unlike the many layabouts we are forced to employ.’
He fixed me with a shrewd gaze.
‘I can see you are looking apprehensive. Please do not think that I am going to ask you to give up being a physician and become an informant! What I would like to do is to use you from time to time, when an impeccably honest face will serve the Queen and the country better than half a dozen slippery men. Like Poley.’
He smiled. Clearly he knew my aversion to the man.
‘Thomas will be riding down to Sussex in two days’ time,’ he said, ‘to the port of Rye. We have received information that an attempt will be made to smuggle two more so-called priests into the country through Sussex sometime next week. Probably not through Rye itself – it is too well guarded by our customs men and searchers. It is more likely that they will choose some small port nearby, one of the fishing villages that lie along the coast there. It is an easy matter for a fishing boat to slip across the Channel to Dieppe or Calais, then sail innocently back into its home port with unwelcome visitors hidden amongst the barrels of fish.’
A sudden flash of memory seized me. I too had once hidden in the bottom of a fishing boat.
‘Once we have picked up the trail,’ Phelippes said, ‘we will either follow them or arrest them, as seems best at the time.’
‘I want you to go with Thomas,’ Sir Francis said. ‘It is time you learned more of our work and this will give you the opportunity.’
I opened my mouth to protest that I was not an agent in Sir Francis’s service. That it had never been my intention even to be a code-breaker. That I did not want to become more embroiled in this murky world than I was already.
Then I closed my mouth again. A sudden and unexpected surge of excitement set my heart beating faster. I smiled at Sir Francis. ‘In two days, did you say?’
Chapter Eleven
Our progress down to Sussex was neither secret nor unobtrusive. Phelippes knew very well how much he was hated by those bent on treason and although he was confident that he had certain knowledge of most of the traitors in the country, even he could not know them all. Moreover, they were a slippery lot. Even Walsingham’s own agents, like Gifford, had a habit of disappearing, sometimes for weeks at a time.
‘A few weeks ago,’ Phelippes said to me as we rode south together, ‘we needed to send Gilbert Gifford on a mission to France, to reassure the conspirators there, especially Thomas Morgan, that he was still acting for them. While he was away, we were obliged to employ another man as courier in his place, without telling him that he was, in fact, acting for Sir Francis. This meant using a very roundabout and difficult way of intercepting the letters and passing them on, to prevent his realising this. Gifford recommended a cousin of his, Thomas Barnes, a known Catholic who would be accepted by Mary’s party.’
I had heard mention of Barnes, but I had paid little attention, as it did not seem to concern me.
‘Barnes has disappeared,’ Phelippes said. ‘Gifford could not find him. We could not find him. For all we know, he may be dead, or he may reappear tomorrow. Of course, our greatest fear has been that Barnes discovered the truth about the secret route via the beer barrels and revealed to the Scottish queen that her correspondence was being watched by us. So far, that does not seem to have happened. But the danger is always there. And any one of our agents could be turned by the enemy at any time and the first
person they would want to eliminate, after Sir Francis, is me. So you are taking quite a gamble, young Kit, riding in company with me.’
He gave me a bleak smile. However, I glanced around at the escort of twenty armed men who surrounded us. Any assassin who made an attempt on Phelippes’s life would pay for it with his own. We were even more heavily protected than Sir Francis had been, returning to London from Barn Elms. It was true that this was a longer journey and would pass through parts of the country from which Babington hoped to draw some of his army. Sussex and particularly Kent had been mentioned in the conspirators’ plans, either from the number of Catholic families living here or from the counties’ proximity to France.
Moreover, the area around Rye, our destination, was a favourite landing place for the priests whom William Allen had been smuggling into England for many years. Both the fishing ports and the bleak area known as Romney Marsh had provided hiding places for traitors in the past.
So I rode south in a very different frame of mind from when I had travelled to Hartwell Hall. Then I had been apprehensive about my journey’s end, but the journey itself under the soft skies of spring had been pleasant. Now I was alert to danger even during the journey itself, despite our armed guard. It was early summer now. The meadows were full of luscious green grass, sprinkled over with meadow flowers like an image of Paradise in a Flemish tapestry – red campion, ox-eye daisies, viper’s bugloss, meadowsweet, cow parsley. Once, on the verge of the road, just escaping the hooves of our passing horses, I saw a clump of the rare and delicate lady’s slipper orchid.
I had nerved myself to ask if I might ride Hector again, and my request had been granted by Sir Francis himself. The horse knew me at once, whickering in greeting. I hoped it was partly for myself and not merely for my pocket full of June-fall apples. We were at ease with each other, which could not be said of Phelippes, who sat on his horse like a marionette whose strings have been cut, slumped over as if he was still pouring over the documents on his desk. Perhaps I have inherited some affinity for horses from my grandfather, for to be mounted again always lifts my spirits. Phelippes merely endured, like the patient man he was, but he decreed that we would ride no further than Sevenoaks that first day. This was a journey of about thirty miles and by the end of it I could see that Phelippes could have ridden no further.