by Ann Swinfen
The door to our house in Duck Lane stood open to let in a little cooling breeze and ease the heat within doors. Joan was sweeping the step and raised her eyebrows when she saw me come bounding along the lane.
‘So you are back then,’ she said impudently, ‘I hope you have been enjoying yourself with your fine friends.’
Having known me since I was a shivering brat of twelve, she presumed too much upon her position, but I was so happy at having shaken the dust of Chartley and Seething Lane from my heels that I could not chide her.
‘Is my father in?’
‘Aye, just back from the hospital.’
Seeing me framed in the doorway, my father rose from his chair and came towards me, his arms outstretched. I flung myself into his embrace. After the sinister affairs in which I had been entangled, I felt suddenly safe again.
He kissed my forehead and ruffled my hair.
‘All is well?’ he asked cautiously.
‘All is well. And all the better for being home.’
I looked around at the humble room, which seemed even more dear after the luxuries of Greenwich Palace.
‘This is for you!’
I pressed my new gold sovereign and the rest of Babington’s purse into his hand with pride.
‘What is this?’
‘Reward for my services. And I hope that is the last of it.’
‘Books,’ he said, with a gleam in his eye. ‘We will be able to buy books!’
I laughed from sheer joy to be back where books were far more important that codes and conspiracies.
In the days that followed I was glad to be back with my father again, glad to be walking every day with him round the corner to the hospital, glad to spend most of my waking hours treating the patients who came each day to the cloisters and those more serious cases who were kept in the wards of the hospital. For me, there is no greater joy than seeing a sick person, in particular a sick child, grow well again under your care.
Now it was my calling to save life, not to send men to the gallows. And I would be able to see Simon again.
Chapter Fifteen
As far as I could, I refused to listen to the news on the street – how the men who had plotted to murder the Queen and bring French and Spanish invaders into England had been caught by Walsingham. I had returned to my work in the hospital, relieved to turn my back on Seething Lane and Walsingham’s secret service. Peter Lambert, however, seemed fascinated by the Babington case. He was passionately loyal to the Queen and in his eyes anyone who plotted against her was a vile monster. No punishment was too severe. I, who knew something of the twisted facts, the lies, the traps which had been set, was deeply uneasy. I had never been quite sure that Babington and his friends had ever really meant harm to the Queen. Knowing Poley, I was certain that they had been ensnared into something beyond their intentions. Unless, of course, my suspicions were right, that Poley was not working for Walsingham but for the traitors. To me Babington and the others (except perhaps Ballard and Savage) seemed more like boastful boys than dangerous traitors. They were nothing but bait in the trap to catch the Scottish queen.
When I suggested this to Peter, without revealing what I knew about the plots of Walsingham and Phelippes, he shook his head.
‘They readily confessed their crimes,’ he said, ‘and are to be executed by the most cruel means available. The Queen has demanded it, it’s common knowledge. Rightly so. They deserve nothing less.’
‘A man may confess anything under torture,’ I said, looked away, busying myself with packing my satchel, so that he might not read my face.
The creak of the strapado pulley. The screams. The stench of excrement. Mama, Mama!
‘They surely were not tortured,’ Peter said, ‘it is against the law!’
He was shocked, and I could not bring myself to tarnish his innocence. What did Peter and his kind know of men like Topcliffe and Waad? Or if they suspected, they blocked their ears to it. Had they not heard of the pamphlet defending the use of torture to examine traitors, written by the lawyer Thomas Norton, he who was known as ‘Rackmaster Norton’? I thought it was common knowledge.
‘What of the Scottish queen?’ I asked. I had kept my own ears shut long enough. Better to hear it now, and an end to it.
‘The Scottish queen, who conspired with them, is to be tried later,’ he said. ‘That is what they are saying in the alehouses. There is no doubt of her guilt. She is certain to be executed.’
I turned away. The whole affair sickened me and I was ashamed of my part in it. I hoped I would be able to avoid hearing any more, but a kind of ghoulish excitement infected the city. People were in a high state of relief that a plot to destroy us all had been foiled, and the release from fear made them cruel. They looked forward to watching the executions. There was talk of it every day, even in the hospital.
‘Will you come with us to watch the traitors die?’ Peter asked me, the day before the executions.
I shook my head.
‘They may be traitors,’ I said, ‘but I find no pleasure in seeing any man die.’
He shrugged and went off whistling, no doubt taking me for a squeamish Stranger who had not a good, full-blooded Englishman’s stomach for patriotic entertainment.
On the twentieth day of September, a little over a month after they were arrested, the first group of men were executed, including Sir Anthony Babington. They were hanged, but cut down before they were dead, their privates cut off and burned before their eyes, then, still living, they were disembowelled. Finally, their bodies were quartered, and the bloody sections spiked up at various gates into the City, as a warning to others who might think to conspire against Queen and State.
All that day I hid myself away in the hospital, unable to eat, my stomach twisted with revulsion and memory, but I heard later than the crowd’s first eagerness for vengeance began to wane when they saw the terrible butchery inflicted on the young men who were, after all, handsome and gallant and courageous in their suffering. When the rest of the conspirators were brought to execution the next day, the crowd turned threatening and demanded that they be hanged until they were truly dead, before the awful mutilations were inflicted.
‘Aye,’ said Peter, recounting what had happened. ‘You were right, perhaps, Kit. It was not honourably done.’
‘Was Robert Poley amongst those executed?’ I asked, keeping my voice neutral, but with a sudden flicker of hope.
‘Nay. They say that there is some doubt about his part in the Catholic conspiracy,’ Peter said. ‘He’s imprisoned in the Tower, but there’s been no word of his trial.’
Was this merely to conceal Walsingham’s use of Poley in the affair? Or had he found evidence of Poley’s treachery? Now I was no longer working at Seething Lane, I did not know what was really happening. As long as Poley was in the Tower, I felt I was safe from him. Simon, who heard the prison gossip from his old acquaintances at the Marshalsea, told me that Poley was living in the Tower in some luxury. Perhaps, I thought, he has been placed there in order to take up again his practice of spying upon Catholic prisoners. I longed to know whether, instead, he would himself be found guilty and executed. With Poley gone, my secret life would once again be safe. I could not longer be forced into work within Walsingham’s secret service by threats to reveal my identity.
The mystery of Gifford’s disappearance was solved about the time the conspirators were arrested. As he saw the jaws of the trap closing around Ballard, with whom he had been such a close companion, Gilbert Gifford had taken fright and fled to France, using Ballard’s own escape route from the Sussex fishing village. He was afraid, perhaps with good reason, that a court might judge him one of the conspirators. He was a known Catholic and had been sent to England by Thomas Morgan in Paris, with orders to aid Ballard and the others. The fact that he had been turned by Sir Francis and had worked valiantly for the State, and at great risk to himself, was known only to a handful of people. The Scottish queen and the conspirators all believed to
the very end that he was loyal to them. In these circumstances there was every chance he would be caught in the trap he had helped to prepare. He was also terrified of appearing as a witness at their trials, fearing a knife in the back some dark night from one of their supporters.
Now he had written to Walsingham and Phelippes from Paris, explaining why he had fled England and saying that he was ready to work for them again as a spy in France. In many ways, Gifford suffered unfairly in all this. Both Walsingham and Phelippes needed to keep up the pretence that he was a traitor, to maintain his cover in France. Even his own father denounced him, writing to Phelippes that he wished his son had never been born. All this I learned from Mylles, when I encountered him one day near his home on my way back from the Nuñez house, where I had gone with a message from my father.
‘Well, Kit,’ Mylles said, ending the news about Gifford, ‘and when shall we see you again at Seething Lane?’
‘I am content with my hospital work.’
I smiled, for I did not want to appear discourteous. ‘There are always sick and needy to be found amongst the poor of London. Besides, now this great matter is concluded, I am sure Master Phelippes has no more need of my services.’
Mylles shook his head. ‘I would not be too sure of that. But we shall see. Times are quiet at present, certainly.’
I bade him farewell and headed towards Bishopsgate and the Theatre. My time was my own after my visit to the Nuñez house and I had a new ballad I wanted to show to Guy. I thought perhaps he might make use of it for an interlude in one of the plays. And of course it was possible Simon might be there.
In November, the Catholic Bishop of Armagh, who had been held in the Tower for twenty years, died suddenly of poison, after receiving a gift of cheese from Poley, though nothing could ever be proved against him. The news revolted me, and strengthened my fear and loathing of the man. That evening long ago at the Marshalsea again haunted my dreams. Had Poley’s own food poisoning given him the idea of administering poison in a gift of food? The man was despicable.
After the young men’s confessions had been wrung from them by torture, it was the Scottish queen’s trial. She was already judged and condemned before she was tried, and, though I know that she was guilty of conspiring in the invasion of England and the murder of our Queen, I could not forget the things I had seen by candlelight: the deciphered letters, my own forged postscript, the crude drawing of the gallows. Once sentenced to be executed, Mary would have to wait, counting out on her rosary her days to the block, until Elizabeth could bring herself to write her name on the warrant, thereby signing away the life of another queen, and her own cousin by blood. A dangerous precedent – for where one queen may be the subject of judicial procedure, may not another?
Winter came, with the matter of the Scottish queen still unresolved, but more and more my mind turned away to other matters. The bitter weather closed in around the middle of December and the annual influx of chest infections began. Every morning beggars were found dead in the doorways of shops where they had taken shelter during the night. Old folk shook their heads, saying there were far more beggars infesting the streets now than in the days when the monasteries cared for the destitute. The cold crept through the cracks into our little house in Duck Lane. Joan complained of chilblains and I took to wearing in bed the cap I had bought in Lichfield.
A brighter note came with Christmas. Marrano or not, no one could live in London and avoid being caught up in the seasonal festivities. The saving of the country from treason and invasion engendered a mood of particular thankfulness and gaiety this Christmas. Yule logs were dragged through the streets. The air was filled with the sweet, spicy scent of Great Cakes being baked for Twelfth Night. Everywhere there were swags of greenery and mistletoe draped across the lintels of shops and houses. These could be bought from stalls in Cheapside or from street pedlars, but some folk got up parties to go out into the countryside and bring back their own.
‘You will join us, will you not, Kit?’ Simon asked me, when I had managed to slip away from the coughs and wheezes for a few hours. ‘We are setting out early tomorrow morning with a handcart. We’ll go out past the tenters' fields at Finsbury into the country beyond, where there are woods. Guy has scouted out a good spot already – plenty of evergreens and ivy, and he has found a holly tree with berries. We must go soon or someone else will find it and strip it bare.’
‘You plan to decorate your lodgings?’ I said.
‘Perhaps, if there is anything left over. But mainly we want it for the playhouse. Usually we cannot play in this cold weather, but Master Burbage is going to put on a comical piece on Twelfth Night and we will serve hot Hippocras for an extra penny, to keep people warm. So we must make the playhouse festive.’
‘I will come if I can,’ I said. ‘Could we gather enough for the hospital too? I would like to make it cheerful for the children who must spend Christmas there.’
James Burbage overheard our conversation.
‘Excellent idea!’ he cried. ‘We will decorate St Bartholomew’s as well, and put on a little merriment for the patients.’
I was not sure the governors would approve of the kind of boisterous merriment Master Burbage probably had in mind, and indeed it might be a little overwhelming for the more seriously ill patients, but I promised to enquire.
The governors proved to be more in favour of the idea than I had expected, though they laid down that the entertainment was to be restrained. A little music and perhaps a seasonal tableau or two.
‘It might cause one or two of the wealthier citizens to take note of the hospital’s needs,’ Sir Jonathan said. ‘If poor players can be generous to the hospital, why then perhaps they might dip their own hands in their pockets.’
My father gave me leave to join the players when they went to gather the greenery. He had not entirely given up his dislike of my friendships there, but he had become resigned to the fact that I was growing up. The months I had spent in Walsingham’s service had changed things between us. I was no longer dependent on being his protected child and his assistant, but was beginning to have a separate life of my own. I assured him that the players took no interest in my true identity. They had come themselves from many different places and ranks in society. Some, I suspected, might have deeds in their past that were best concealed. They lived for their work and for the day, and did not dwell on what had gone before.
‘We will be taking two handcarts,’ Burbage said, herding his motley company together in the frosty December dawn. ‘One for the Theatre and one for the hospital. When we have decorated the playhouse we will trundle ourselves across London and help you decorate the hospital, Kit.’
Although it was so cold that we walked in a cloud of our own misty breath, the brisk pace soon warmed us up. By the time we reached the wood, one or two were even unwinding the scarves with which they had swathed their heads and noses. Every twig and lingering oak leaf, every clump of winter grass, was fringed and sheathed with the delicate tracery of hoar-frost, which gleamed and sparkled in the low-lying winter sun. With so many hands to the work, we had soon filled the two carts with evergreen branches of spruce, long festoons of ivy, and holly from the berried tree that Guy had discovered. It took longer to find mistletoe, but then one of the young lads, who had wandered off on his own, came running back with the news that he had spotted an old apple tree groaning under the weight of mistletoe.
‘Here,’ he said triumphantly, pointing to the tree on the edge of a farmer’s orchard. ‘Enough for us to set up shop.’
The old tree looked as though it would never bear apples again, for the mistletoe had colonised it entirely. Great balls of the fleshy growth sprouted from every branch, so large I would barely have been able to close my arms around one, each ball studded with berries as white as the pearls embroidered on one of the Queen’s gowns.
Burbage made a face. ‘We cannot help ourselves to this, not without the farmer’s permission. I shall enquire.’
With that he strode off. From the impressive straightness of his back, I knew he was casting himself into one of his kingly parts. It reminded me of Simon’s advice when I was about to go off to the Fitzgeralds’ house in the role of tutor. I had used it again, when playing the messenger boy.
Think yourself into the skin of the person you are playing, and everyone will believe you.
Burbage, in his own mind, was a king, an emperor, benignly bestowing a favour upon the farmer, in seeking his permission to gather the mistletoe. Who could resist him?
While Burbage was away on his royal embassage, we sat on the edges and shafts of the carts and ate the food we had brought with us until he returned, beaming.
‘He has granted us permission and has even given half a sovereign to the hospital. Here you are, Kit. Take charge of this.’
I put the half sovereign carefully into my purse. I had not carried so great a value in coin since Sir Anthony . . . But I would not let myself think of that.
Christopher Haigh twirled a ball of mistletoe over his head. ‘Are there many pretty maidens at the hospital, Kit? I’ll wager you know a few.’
I grinned. Christopher played the young lover in romances and fancied himself an irresistible ladies’ man.
‘There are all the nursing sisters,’ I said, wickedly. ‘Droves of them.’
His eyes sparkled.
‘I don’t believe any of them are a day over . . . seventy. And none under forty either.’
I ducked and ran as he chased me through the orchard, shouting abuse.
The entertainment at the hospital was a great success, neither as lively as Master Burbage would have liked, nor as restrained as the governors would have preferred. On the whole I think it did the patients good. Certainly the children had the best Christmas of their lives, for they came from homes where no one would ever have heard such music or eaten such bonbons as Guy extracted mysteriously from behind their ears or under their chins. Many families of the patients came too, and took back word of the players’ Twelfth Night comedy, so when the day came they had a good audience. Even my father agreed to attend. It was not the serious play I had hoped would change his view of the playhouse, but to my relief it was not too vulgar either.