The Spy of Venice

by Benet Brandreth

  The carter was oblivious to the man-made nature of the bear’s escape, intent solely on its recapture. William dropped to the ground and worked his way round to where Hemminges stood, breathing hard. Perched on a windowsill above him was Oldcastle.

  ‘An undignified exit. Pursued by a bear,’ Oldcastle called out as William approached. ‘Did you see Towne run? Did you see?’

  Oldcastle was laughing hard though he was in an equally undignified state. It being no easy thing for a man as round as Oldcastle to haul himself up on a narrow ledge and then to cling there.

  ‘How did you get your fat backside up there?’ Hemminges enquired of his friend as Oldcastle picked his way down.

  ‘It was a miracle, praise God,’ said Oldcastle, ‘and thanks be to his servant also, John Hemminges, who like brave Hector before the walls of Troy –’

  ‘Jesu, Nick. Quiet a moment,’ said Hemminges.

  The words were softly spoken but Oldcastle’s mouth shut with a snap. He didn’t seem offended.

  ‘You fight very well,’ William ventured.

  Oldcastle began nodding with enthusiasm. ‘Does he not? Yes, yes. Of course, Hemminges was the dancing master to Lord Hunsdon in his time. He moves as quickly and gracefully as the tassel on a spendthrift’s purse.’

  Hemminges was eyeing William up and down.

  ‘The bear?’ he asked.

  William nodded; his work.

  Hemminges grinned. He turned to Oldcastle. ‘For Jesu’s sake, pay that lout Towne, will you.’

  ‘That dunghill? That bawd? That scullion?’ Oldcastle protested. ‘That all-changing word?’

  His voice was rising with every spat out name.

  Hemminges raised his hands in surrender. ‘Enough. You know Towne. You know he’ll not let it rest. Will I be there next time?’

  ‘With praetorians such as you and William I fear no enemy,’ declared Oldcastle with the boldness that comes from there being no danger at hand.

  He clapped his guards about their shoulders and guided them north to the nearest tavern.

  These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope

  The day after he met with Lord Hunsdon at the Paris Garden Sir Henry had heard nothing. The day after that he received a letter from Walsingham with a single word on it.

  ‘He is agreed,’ said Sir Henry to his secretary, Christopher Hall.

  ‘Sir Henry?’

  ‘I have my commission from the Queen and now my cargo from Sir Francis,’ said Sir Henry.

  Hall coughed. ‘The names of the papal spies?’ he asked.

  ‘Not in this letter, of course. Sir Francis would not allow such things to be written down. We must meet him at Whitehall. From his mouth to my ear. That is the way of these things.’

  Sir Henry looked to his steward, Fallow, who stood before his desk. ‘We must make final preparation for the journey to Venice.’

  Fallow had fine hair that floated thinly above his pate like weeds wafting in a pond. He carried his ledger with him like a Bible. He was not one for smiles.

  ‘We are advanced in all things, Sir Henry,’ his steward answered. ‘There is provision for three carts for the journey. The rest will be sent ahead by sea. It must ship within the fortnight if it is to be in Venice before we are.’

  ‘Sir Henry,’ Hall ventured in a quiet voice, ‘you are certain you do not wish to go by ship?’

  ‘Too dangerous, we would pass too close to Spanish waters,’ Sir Henry answered. ‘By horseback will do. We must move silently and without drawing attention to our journey.’

  He rose from his desk.

  ‘Fetch Watkins please, Christopher,’ he said to his secretary. ‘You and I must go to Whitehall today.’

  Watkins joined Sir Henry and Hall in the hallway of Sir Henry’s house.

  ‘Come, Watkins, we must at once to Whitehall to speak to Lord Hunsdon and to Sir Francis Walsingham.’ Sir Henry clapped his hands together.

  A rare smile came across Watkins’ face. It did him no favours since it twisted a face already scarred and broken. A grim face for a manservant but Sir Henry had not employed him for his looks.

  ‘The hoped for news, Sir Henry?’ Watkins said.

  ‘Indeed. We are set for Venice. There is much to be done.’

  Sir Henry strode for the door with Watkins and Hall following.

  ‘Sir,’ Watkins called as he snatched for his sword. ‘Let me fetch another man.’

  ‘No time,’ Sir Henry said over his shoulder. ‘Come, bustle, bustle.’

  Sir Henry stepped into the street. It was crowded at this hour. The old man had been given wind by Sir Francis Walsingham’s agreement to his plan. He walked with purpose. Sir Henry had feared Hunsdon would be unable to persuade Walsingham. The man was too fixed on the French. Clearly even he had seen the wisdom of Sir Henry’s counsel. Pieces in the game breed choices. Who knew to which England might wish to have recourse?

  Watkins tried to push ahead, to clear a passage for Sir Henry through the hurly-burly. He struggled to pull on his baldric as he walked. Hall and Sir Henry trailed behind.

  ‘What news of the players?’ Sir Henry asked.

  ‘We have not found the right company yet,’ Hall replied, steering round a group of apprentices heading to work.

  ‘You have put out the word?’

  ‘I have, Sir Henry, through all routes.’

  ‘Good, good. I must have the right men.’ He corrected himself. ‘The right man.’

  The crush grew greater still as the streets narrowed down towards the River Thames. Watkins was pushed back by the press of the crowd. Sir Henry and Hall slipped on ahead. People filled the gap between them. Watkins struggled against the tide. Sir Henry paused ahead to let a wheelbarrow pass. Watkins closed back on his master. Sir Henry was no more than a sword’s length ahead of him.

  ‘What of my friend at Court?’ said Sir Henry to Hall in the lull of movement.

  ‘She writes that she has spread the word,’ Hall answered.

  ‘No more yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So, so. We must be patient.’

  The barrow passed. Sir Henry set off again. Hall struggling to keep pace beside him amid the obstacles of the street, now falling behind, now darting to Sir Henry’s side. Ahead lay the river where he would take a boat to Whitehall.

  The bell of St Benet’s began to ring the hour. Watkins looked up at the sound. He looked back down from the steeple. Ahead a man pressed against the flow of the crowd, heading towards Sir Henry. Watkins felt his teeth grind against each other. The man wore a scarf wrapped round his face, a hat, brim pulled down. Watkins drove against the crowd to catch up to Sir Henry before the masked man reached him. Watkins pushed aside a baker with a tray of buns, ignoring the angry cry. He was too late, the man was at Sir Henry’s shoulder.

  The man walked past.

  Sir Henry’s passage was unhindered.

  Watkins sighed and slowed and cursed his straining nerves. Then he saw Hall arch and cry.

  Watkins started forward.

  The masked man turned, took Hall by the shoulder and hauled him to the ground. Sir Henry stared open-mouthed. Iron bloomed in the masked man’s fist. His blade came back to strike at Sir Henry. Watkins grappled his arm from behind. The masked man turned and ripped the blade back, scoring Watkins along the palm. The man punched the thin blade at Watkins’ gut but Watkins caught his arm and twisted it aside. He cracked his elbow across the man’s face. The masked man grunted and pulled his hand back. Watkins went with the pull and drove his knee into the man’s stomach. Fingers clawed at Watkins’ face. He drove the hand with the blade against the wall, smashing and scraping, ignoring the fingers that reached for his eyes. The knife fell to the ground. Watkins pushed away and reached for his sword. The man leaped after him and Watkins half drew his blade to drive the pommel into the masked man’s face. The man staggered back. Watkins drew fully and thrust.

  The bell of St Benet’s had not yet finished the hour’s toll.

&nb
sp; The masked man was pinned to the wall. His hands pulled and fluttered at the rapier. Watkins stepped back and kicked him in the gut, pulling his sword free. The masked man slid down the wall. His hands reached feebly for his doublet. Watkins lifted his knee and drove his heel forward into the man’s face. He heard bone crack. The masked man moved no more, save slowly to keel over.

  Watkins looked about. Sir Henry stood in an empty street that had been full a moment before. At his feet lay his secretary, Christopher Hall. Sir Henry bent to the man. Watkins looked away to scan the road. He could see no other danger. In the distance he heard the cry for the Watch. He bent to search the masked man’s body.

  ‘He’s dead, Watkins.’

  Watkins turned at his name. Sir Henry was kneeling by his secretary’s body. His hand held the dead man’s.

  ‘So is this one,’ Watkins answered.

  ‘Good,’ said Sir Henry.

  After a moment he continued. ‘Good. Though it might have been as well to question him.’

  Sir Henry rose and looked up at his manservant. Watkins threw something to him.

  ‘All that he had upon him, Sir Henry. Hidden in his doublet. He reached for it as he lay dying.’

  Sir Henry looked at the rosary and then threw it aside. He walked over to where the murderer’s blade lay. A thin weapon, all point, a stiletto.

  ‘The back thrust as he passed, Sir Henry,’ said Watkins. ‘Your good fortune that poor Christopher moved behind you as he struck.’

  ‘Poor Christopher,’ said Sir Henry, still looking at the stiletto on the ground.

  ‘I am sorry, Sir Henry, I failed you,’ said Watkins as he looked at Hall’s body.

  Sir Henry did not answer him. He was thinking that the Cardinal Montalto was a worried man.

  Live scandalised and foully spoken of

  William sat under the stable roof at the Theatre. A smile was on his lips. A horse blanket was pulled around him against an April chill. A stub of quill was in his hand and, balanced on his knee, a small scrap of paper. Onto it William dripped poison line by line.

  Towne’s rout at the Paris Garden had been but a partial victory. Hemminges had made Oldcastle pay his debt to Towne. That had served to blunt the sharpness of Towne’s anger at Oldcastle but had not broken it. William’s role in the fight had added him to the list of those against whom Towne took offence. Now, where he could, Towne menaced Oldcastle and William both. Hemminges he gave greater respect, leading Oldcastle to trail after Hemminges like an infant seeking protection under his mother’s dress. William had racked his mind for some way to fend Towne off, but none presented itself.

  With no plan to defeat the ogre William had settled for petty revenge. He had penned a series of scandalous verses that questioned Towne’s parentage and appearance. His favourite had made a strong argument, in rhyme, for Towne’s visits to the Paris Garden being born of too great a love for dogs. To find a rhyme for ‘unnatural’ had been no small matter. William had pinned the poems about Shoreditch where all might read them.

  He had expected nothing from the verses but the lustful pleasure of vengeance. For certain, there had been that. Yet more too, and oddly. Towne had seemed cowed by them. Since first William published them a week had passed. In that time, as the poems made him meat for public mockery, Towne had seemed to diminish, eaten up by the contempt of him they generated. He still menaced Oldcastle and William when the chance presented itself. Yet that was less often. Towne ventured abroad less. Nor did his friends seem so many or so willing to support him. William had revelled in the power of his words even as he wondered at it.

  That William was the author became known without him publishing the fact. He had used old scraps to write on, bills for plays at the Theatre or the bear-baiting at the Paris Garden. Still, the hand was the same and the rivalry between Oldcastle and Towne well known, as was William’s part as Oldcastle’s ally. So it was that occasional compliments were sent William’s way for a well-turned barb. Compliments that were no argument against the practice either. Even Hemminges, happy to be released from the constant care of Oldcastle by Towne’s cowing, had recited a line to William.

  ‘Ho, William, writing to your wife?’

  William looked up to see Oldcastle. A pang of guilt went through him. He should be writing to his family. Not penning poems to punish a man more fool than villain. He tucked the scrap away unfinished.

  Oldcastle ushered a short man towards him, Sir Henry Carr. William saw him close for the first time. Sir Henry wore a doublet of thick cloth embroidered with gold thread and pearls. Fine lace was stitched to cuff and collar. They were the clothes of a wealthy man. They were askew. William realised that the buttons on the front were in the wrong holes. The man appeared not to have noticed. In appearance he hardly seemed a likely candidate for one of the spymaster Walsingham’s brotherhood. Behind Sir Henry, hanging back by the entrance to the courtyard of the Theatre with his hand on the pommel of his sword and his head turning like the swivel gun on a ship’s deck, stood a figure more suited to the part. Neither Oldcastle nor Sir Henry introduced him.

  Sir Henry peered at William.

  ‘This is your poet, is it, Master Oldcastle?’

  ‘Indeed, Sir Henry, William Shakespeare,’ said Oldcastle. ‘This is Sir Henry Carr, William, a great patron of our Theatre.’

  Sir Henry smiled benignly at Oldcastle’s praise.

  ‘Your poem, Shakespeare,’ said Sir Henry to William, ‘very good. Most entertaining. I hear the hero of it is most cowed by his new fame.’

  ‘Like a whipped cur, Sir Henry,’ Oldcastle said. ‘William saw where the hurt would lie greatest and stuck his pen in there.’

  William wondered that his scraps of poetry should have come to the attention of one such as Sir Henry. He opened his mouth to curb Oldcastle’s boasting but Sir Henry, appearing not to notice, spoke on.

  ‘Perhaps you would be so kind as to pen something on my behalf?’

  ‘Of course,’ said William. In this flood of conversation it seemed easiest to be swept along.

  Sir Henry nodded as if William’s agreement was a foregone conclusion. The little man studied him carefully and it was a moment before William realised that Sir Henry did not intend to speak.

  ‘Sir Henry, I am sorry, sir, do you –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did you have a theme?’ William asked.

  ‘Of course, Shakespeare. Love is the theme,’ said Sir Henry. ‘I am courting and I have come to the view that a love finely expressed in poetry would serve my purpose rather well. It is not a talent that I possess, but Master Oldcastle has convinced me that you do. It should be short.’

  ‘A sonnet?’ William asked.

  ‘If you like. As you like. I do not seek to control the muse within you.’

  Oldcastle was nodding at Sir Henry’s words like a horse trying to shoo away a flea.

  ‘It would be good,’ Sir Henry said, ‘were the poem to include some unflattering comparisons between my person and that of an importunate rival for my beloved’s affections.’

  He paused here and looked meaningfully between Oldcastle and William.

  ‘I think you understand, Master Oldcastle,’ he said.

  ‘I do, I do, Sir Henry,’ said Oldcastle.

  ‘Good, good. Well then, it is settled. Would you fetch it to me the day after tomorrow, at noon? Good. Well done.’

  Sir Henry nodded at Oldcastle and William, turned and went. The scarred man at the gate fell in beside him. William stared.

  ‘You may understand what has just happened, Nick, but I have no clue.’

  Oldcastle was smiling. ‘A patron, you young hawker.’ He clapped William on the back. ‘What has happened is that you have got yourself a patron and a good one at that. If you don’t make a mess of it.’

  ‘He only wants a poem, Nick,’ said William.

  ‘Today,’ replied Oldcastle, ‘today he wants a poem. Tomorrow perhaps more. Make yourself useful to him and who knows what may come of
it?’

  ‘Why me?’ William asked.

  ‘ “Towne’s Dropsy”, I imagine. Very good, very sharp.’ Oldcastle paused to chuckle and hum a line from William’s most recent poem.

  William rolled his eyes. Such a road to success he was walking.

  ‘What did he mean about the love rival?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Oldcastle. ‘Sir Henry, for all his years, has a roving eye. He has settled his intent on a lady at the Court. He did not confide in me the lady’s name. A beauty no doubt, and educated too. Of course, with a connoisseur’s eye, one must expect others to look with interest on the same choice. So it is with Sir Henry.’

  ‘And I am to traduce this rival?’ asked William. ‘God above, what a way to earn the enmity of powerful men.’

  ‘Oh you’ll like this,’ said Oldcastle. ‘Sir Henry’s rival is not another noble.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Far from it. It is the playwright, Greene.’

  ‘Robert Greene? Jesu, that’s worse yet.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Oldcastle chuckled to himself, ‘such a temper on that little rampallian. Now another reason for him to take against you to add to your pursuit of Constanza Briaga.’

  Oldcastle’s eye gleamed at the prospect. ‘You’ve none to blame but yourself,’ he said. ‘It was your suggestion.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘Did you not say that Hemminges and I should speak to Sir Henry about his embassy? And so we did.’

  ‘I thought Hemminges feared to join with the deadly spy.’

  ‘William, William, it is Hemminges’ nature to be all caution. But look upon the man, Sir Henry. I ask you, is this the dress of a hell-black intelligencer? ’Sides, I am cut from bolder cloth and Hemminges was swayed by my arguments.’