by Talbot Mundy
The place where Joshua Stiles did business was a great house built of brick, containing offices of more than a dozen merchants, close to the new Exchange that had been built by Sir Thomas Gresham. The house had a yard in its midst, in which scores of messengers and porters, and some sailors, warmed themselves at sea-coal fires that burned in iron pots. The snow, grey and sombre with soot, had been piled up in heaps that did not melt because so little sunshine came into the yard, but the firelight shone on the snow right handsomely.
A pompous jackanapes in livery stood at the entrance-gate and asked my business, seeming to take it ill that I was guided by a city ‘prentice and not followed by a servant of my own, nor not on horseback; and while I pondered whether to bestow a largesse on the churl to change his humour I felt my cloak pulled from behind.
Marry, but I did not want to see Will Shakespeare then! There he stood, as pleased to find me as if I owed him money. His old-fashioned country suit looked shabby, and I wanted to ruffle it handsomely, not show myself to an important stranger for the first time in a bumpkin’s company. I stepped back to the street to learn what brought him, masking my displeasure.
“Willy,” he said, smiling, “Roger Tunby takes it ill that you should leave his house all raw, uncounselled and alone. He fears that you may fall among trim-witted fellows who will spoil you of that finery! He bade me follow you, and, if I would keep his goodwill, not to return without you. Marry! but he set no limit to the venture.”
“How so?” I demanded, not exactly comprehending, though I read the mischief in his eyes and by the rood it softened my ill humour.
“Why, as day in search of night, and night of day, let mutual pursuit not cease until we meet in gloaming at our host’s door,” he retorted.
I could see that he had news for me, but he proposed to tell it in his own way, mocking-my impatience with an air of having all eternity to browse in.
“Let us steal a march on destiny,” said he, “and for the moment be the fortune’s favourites that hope accredits us. Insane ambition was the bane of Lucifer, but we’re not angels, Will. A bird may whistle where a mitred abbot were ashamed to speak. So let imagination pluck that pheasant’s feather from your hat and fly for both of us. I’ll borrow wings from you. We’ll both go looking for Will Halifax — yourself the genius of what he shall be, looking for the runagate that is, to make a man of him — and I, the counsellor, contributing such ill advice as Satan uses to keep homing souls from Heaven!”
It was half an hour before I had the story from him. I had hardly left old Roger Tunby’s house that morning, it appeared, before the common carrier drew rein with letters out of Warwickshire that Tunby bore into the closet at the shop’s rear with an air of secrecy. That left Will free to exchange a word or two of gossip with the carrier, who told him that one letter was from Tony Pepperday.
Remembering that Tony was my Mildred’s lawful guardian who, by unhappy chance and monstrous, misliked me, Will plied the carrier with questions. And it seemed that the carrier, like many other folk, well understood what I knew not at all, that Roger Tunby wanted Mildred for his own son Edward, knowing what a comfortable dowry she should have and being so involved with Tony Pepperday in dealings that might otherwise turn to his disadvantage.
“Quoth the carrier,” said Will, “the devil himself would need a long spoon should he sup with either of them.”
“Can they marry a couple when one is abroad and the other unwilling?” I asked Will.
“Nay,” said he, “but ships come home, and absence has a way of ending in the course of time! As for the maid’s unwillingness, they say it is a woman’s heritage to change her mind. You are not so puritanical, I take it, that design might forge no scandal for your Mildred’s ears?”
For that speech I cursed him — albeit something gently, for I loved the man, although he could think of more ingenious disasters in a moment than the devil might invent in half a lifetime, and he aggravated discontent by watching like a groundling at a play to see the outcome. Yet he was the friendliest observer.
“I have heard,” said he, “that this man Joshua Stiles, whom you seek, is after the Spanish fashion, more solemn than wise. Nay, I know no more than rumour — what the ‘prentices have told me.”
I did not want Will with me when I should meet Stiles, but neither did I wish to lack his friendship, so I thought of a way to be presently rid of him and at the same time to advantage both of us. I bade him bring the horses and to meet me where we stood as soon as might be, saying I would let him ride my roan. (For, I thought, if he should ride the mare again so soon he might forget the change of ownership.)
Then I bade that churl in livery at the gate to conduct me forthwith to Joshua Stiles’s presence, he insolently answering that I might cool my humour in the yard along with the other petitioners until it should please his honour to send for me. And while we bandied words so loudly that the porters left the fires to come and watch us, Joshua Stiles himself came fuming through a doorway, pompous and important, to discover what the scandal might be. All they in the yard saluted him with a “good morning, Master Stiles,” but he took no notice and I judged his temper reasonably well.
He was a hard-faced man with a pointed grey beard, tall and muscular, his hair nigh whiter than his starched ruff. From under shaggy brows his pale-blue eyes looked old with worry, although alertness glimmered in their depths, and he had a way of standing with both hands on his hips and his paunch thrust out, that he may have thought lent him importance. He was very richly dressed. He had a harsh voice.
“How now, sirrah?” he demanded. “You mistake this for the fish-wharf? Shall I order you thrown in the Clink (One of the London prisons.) for a disturber of the peace?”
I answered soberly that I had news for him. He asked me roughly, what news? I replied, such news as he might not wish bruited. He demanded to know whence I came and whether my name was entered on the Lord Mayor’s list of strangers in the City; to which I answered, he himself might write such informations as he pleased when he had heard what I would tell him privily. Whereat he stood a moment fingering the gold chain that he wore around his neck, and I judged him a sheep in a wolf-skin.
“Come,” he said, leading the way.
I followed him into a room wherein a bright fire burned in an iron grate and two clerks wrote at a table. There were documents in racks and boxes.
“Now then, sirrah. To the point, and briefly!” he commanded. But I said nothing, looking sideways at the clerks and from the clerks again to him.
So he dismissed them from the room and took his stand, with hands on hips again and his back to the fire, leaving me in the light. I took care he should read self-assurance on my face.
When we had tried to stare each other out of countenance, I asked him whether he had lost aught on the road from Bristol lately; whereat he put his hand to his beard and hesitated in a way that put me thoroughly on guard against him. There was a great square key-hole in the door that led into the next room; I would have wagered a clerk was listening.
“What have you of mine?” he demanded.
But I was not so country-raw as all that.
“I know,” I said, “a man who found a red box with a green stone figure in it. I can get the thing if I can find its proper owner.”
“Will you sell it?” he demanded. “How much?”
“No,” said I. “For shall I sell you what is not mine? But I am minded that it might be such a talisman as sets its finder on the road to fortune.”
“It will lead you on the road to Tyburn Tree,” he answered. “If you have my property, surrender it before I have you clapped in fetters!”
But though he was reputed rich, and an alderman to boot, it crossed my mind that he might have more will than ability to execute such malice. So I said I was mistaken, having heard the owner of the gimcrack was a civil enough gentleman:
“Whereas you, sir,” I said, “seem somewhat lacking in that particular. I will take my information t
o the Lord Mayor, who will know what should be done.”
I knew I had him then. He was in six minds all at once.
“I have a toothache and the chill air frets me, shortening my temper,” he said at last. “I should have perceived you are of gentle breeding and I beg you to forget my hasty rudeness, that offends me more than it did you.
“I suspect the toy of which you speak is mine,” he said, “and truth to tell, I will be glad to get it back without such bruiting of my foolish fondness for the thing as might stir ridicule. If you will bring it to my house in Spitalfields, to-night at eight o’ the clock, I will be at leisure to discuss what influence I can exert in your behalf.”
To put a better face on it he questioned me about my name and parentage, pretending he had known my father Sir Harry.
Nevertheless, I let him hold me there in conversation, he turning over in his mind, I did not doubt, the while he talked, alternatives for my discomfiture.
It was an hour, and he summoned by his clerk to the Exchange, before he took my arm and walked with me to the gate where already Will Shakespeare sat on my horse Robin, holding the led mare.
Will and I rode westward, for it was time that the walking in Paul’s should begin, of which I had heard my father tell so often, and of how all the favourites at court who had the Queen’s ear could be seen there promenading, as well as all those who wished to seem important or who sought an opportunity to press their suits by getting word with someone of influence.
Avoiding Cheapside, lest one of Roger Tunby’s ‘prentices should recognize us, we had turned along a street nearby the river when a circumstance befell that ushered me on to the stage of great events, though through a back-door, as it were.
There began a clamour of all the church-bells and a din of shouting — then a surge of people out of by-lanes toward Cheapside. Women leaned from upper windows. I thought haply Queen Elizabeth herself were coming, which, if it were so, was a sight that neither Will nor I would have missed, not though we lacked a meal for looking — although Will told me he had seen her once at Kenilworth what time the Earl of Leicester entertained her with unnumbered strange conceits. (But Will was young then.)
So we turned up a lane into Cheapside and waited, realizing presently that all that clamour of bells was something other than a festival. For dignity we forbore questioning, but we were puzzled by the crowd’s behaviour, which seemed to me expectant rather of a good bear-baiting than the passage of the Queen’s grace. And presently, from the City, came a great roar our way, increasing until it almost drowned the clangour of the bells. Then I saw a group of horsemen and behind them, yeomen from the Tower in bright red liveries with black hats — bearded, handsome fellows armed with halberds, forcing the crowd to either side to make a passage through the midst.
Then followed he who was the instigator of the whole commotion. Came an old grey horse that drew a hurdle, whereon lay a man so tied by legs and wrists that he could raise himself a little on his elbows. He was clothed in sacking, and his arms and the calves of his legs were blue with the cold — a middle-aged man who, I thought, might look right gently bred in other circumstances.
Never had I seen a man so howled at and so execrated; nor never have I seen a poor wretch so resentful of the fate that he had brought down on himself, nor more undignified in his attempt to win the people to his way of thinking. Many and many a man I have seen die, some of whom were caitiffs, but none have I seen that feared his death and clamoured his complaints as that one did.
He would raise himself until the cords cut deep into his arms, and cry out that he called on God to hold Queen Elizabeth guilty of his blood. For a moment the crowd would listen. Then it drowned his cries under a roar of mockery and execration, so that you would think he would know how little use it was to make appeal to them. But he cried out the more; and all the while he kept glancing over his shoulder at the executioners, who walked behind him dressed in black, wearing black masks, the one carrying a hempen rope and the other the great quartering knife with its edge toward the culprit.
Behind the executioners were other yeomen of the guard to keep the crowd from harming the poor wretch; and, indeed, I think, if it had not been for the yeomen and their halberds, there would have been no work left for the executioner to do, so savage was the crowd’s mood. There were some who threw stones and vegetables, although not many, having scant time to procure the ammunition. One yeoman was struck by a stone and left the ranks to punish him who threw it; not discovering the man, he struck another with his halberd, and so shrewdly that the rest took warning of the broken head.
The procession passed and I looked for someone to tell me who the poor wretch was who rode the hurdle. There was a dark-faced fellow almost at my saddle-bow — a man with clever-looking hazel eyes, clean-shaven, well dressed in a dark green suit that might be some nobleman’s livery, although it bore no cognizance. He seemed right eager to address me, so I looked the other way to test his eagerness, and presently he touched my knee.
“I saw you having speech with Joshua Stiles, the alderman,” he said. “Will you troll the bowl with me awhile in yonder tavern? We will drink a fathom-health to Good Queen Bess.”
He took my mare’s rein, smiling confidently when I bade him let go.
“I am Benjamin Berden,” he said, “in the service of Mister Secretary Walsingham.”
He might have been speaking falsely, but he claimed high influence, so I held my tongue and followed him into the tavern, leaving Will to mind the horses; but the lad Jack Giles had followed us and took the reins from Will, who was nothing loth to bear us company. So we three took seats at a table in a corner and were served with ale and cheese by a wench who took such interest in Will that she spilled ale on my cloak.
Berden seemed in no haste to unfold his business. He told us that the wretch we saw drawn on a hurdle was Doctor Parry of the Queen’s household and a member of the parliament now sitting. He had been convicted of plotting against the Queen’s life, having agreed with one Neville, a relative of the Earl of Westmoreland, to blow her up in bed with gunpowder. But Neville had betrayed the plot, and Parry had confessed under threat of torture; whereat, such indignation had there been in parliament that Sir Thomas Lucy had proposed a bill to authorize a form of execution worse than that provided by the statues. But Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Rawleigh and a few others protesting, word of it had reached the Queen’s ears, so that she herself prevented it by a message to parliament, declaring that the present penalties were ample — as indeed whoever witnesseth can testify.
“But there are many who think otherwise,” said Berden, “since, if the Queen were killed, she would leave no heir of her body to rule the realm. The Scottish Queen — aye, and the King of Spain, and the Duke of Guise, would surely contrive to lay this kingdom low under the Pope’s heel, of which we had a-plenty in Queen Mary’s reign. There be many,” he said, “who have heard how the Pope offers a good round sum of money and his blessing to whoever murders her. Such hold to the opinion that it might be wisdom to revive King Harry’s medicine for traitors — boiling them alive in oil, although the oil costs money and is not good for much else afterwards.”
But I thought that a dreadful death could hardly terrify a man of courage, and Will Shakespeare added that whatever Sir Thomas Lucy might invent would be a poxy method to procure unquietness, since wisdom does not brew itself in fools’ heads. We were like to have begun an argument, Will having no love for Sir Thomas Lucy, who had stocked him more than once for killing deer, but Berden stayed that, coming to the point at last:
“What know you of Joshua Stiles?” he asked me.
I told him I thought the alderman a sheep’s head in a wolf’s shift. One word led to another and at last, divining that this Berden was a man whose confidences might prove useful to me, I related to him how the gimcrack in its red box came into my hands, and how Joshua Stiles coveted the thing, it being doubtless his.
Berden asked to clap eye on the gimcr
ack, but I was minded to discover first what underlay his interest. So he asked, would I show it to a secretary of Sir Francis Walsingham?
“Aye,” I answered, “if he will present me to Sir Francis afterwards, since I lack present means of having access to the Queen’s grace.”
“You aim high,” said Berden. But he thought a while, and presently he put me to a deal of questioning.
It tickled him, I thought, that I should speak unkindly of the Earl of Leicester, but warned me of discussing high personages.
“There are spies,” he told me, “whichever way a man turns. Spies for the French and Spanish embassies, and for the Scottish Queen, and for the Privy Council — aye, and for the Queen herself, if only the truth were known; so that what a man says privily this morning may be bruited in the Queen’s ears in the afternoon.”
I said I doubted it, to make him say more, although I believed him well enough.
“I myself am a spy for Sir Francis Walsingham,” he said. “I will stand your friend before Sir Francis if you will do the like by me. He recks too little yet of my discretion. I could summon guards and hale you to him, but he might reward me or he might blame, and I better like the thought of bringing you before Lord Burghley, who is liker to employ you, and by the same good service to yourself I fasten two strings to my own bow.”
He told me then a long tale of his doings: how his father was a preacher of the new religion, who had fled from England when Queen Mary married the Spanish King, and no man’s life was safe who refused to acknowledge the Pope. How, consequently, he himself had learned Italian and French and German in Geneva, not returning to his own land until she whom men call Bloody Mary died, with Calais written on her heart (for so they tell), and her sister, our great Elizabeth, came out of durance to be Queen, at which time Berden was a boy of fourteen years.