The Spy of Venice

by Benet Brandreth

  ‘Yet,’ she said, ‘for my father it was not enough.’

  ‘Not enough,’ said William, ‘ungrateful, black-scabbed villains all. I would your father’d such a beating to call it “not enough”. ’

  ‘He wanted more. I think there would have been but that your friends disturbed the business,’ said Alice. ‘When you three had left, Sir Henry declared himself satisfied and Sir Thomas also, but my father called for more.’

  ‘Dear God, was ever man plagued by such enemies?’

  ‘Come now, Will,’ Alice chided, ‘you’ve none to blame but yourself for my father’s enmity.’

  ‘True,’ said William.

  ‘Besides, all pleasures have a price, and the sweetest pleasures command the highest price.’

  This time it was William who laughed. ‘Did I mistake you for an innocent flower? I am more fool than even my enemies name me.’

  ‘You get no argument from me,’ said Alice, ‘but a fair warning. My father railed against the decision of Sir Thomas and Sir Henry to let the matter lie. He dare not go against them openly, but I know him. You are a poison that works and roils within him and he will have you answer for it. Since he has kept me with him I have seen him at his plotting. I know he has spoken to men, dangerous and greedy with it. I think you are in danger.’

  William closed his eyes and leaned back against the stable wall. For a long time he said nothing.

  ‘I cannot stay,’ said Alice.

  ‘I know,’ said William. ‘Bless you for coming. For your warning will save me.’

  William took her hands. ‘Help me again. Tomorrow I will send you a letter.’

  ‘Don’t. Anything for me my father would open and read,’ said Alice.

  ‘I am counting on it,’ said William. ‘The message inside will be for him whatever the name it bears. Remember that.’

  ‘I will,’ said Alice.

  William rose from the bed. ‘I’ll go with you to Sir Henry’s house. The hour is late.’

  ‘No,’ said Alice, ‘I’ve a companion for the journey already.’

  William looked at her. ‘You’re blushing prettily.’

  ‘I didn’t get out of Sir Henry’s house by picking the lock now, did I?’ said Alice.

  William held up his hands in defeat.

  ‘I ask only that you remain my friend, Alice Hunt,’ he said. ‘The Lord knows I can afford only one of your family as an enemy and better it should be the weakest among you.’

  She kissed him and was gone, leaving him to sit on his bed, to wonder at Sir Henry’s tricks and tests and strange talk of William’s role in the embassy, and to try to press his tired brain to action before the other Hunt’s vengeance fell.

  To compass wonders but by help of devils

  The morning after Alice’s visit had been one of messages and sendings.

  When dawn had come William set off for the City to the address Sir Henry had given him for the letter. Returning to the Theatre he found a letter from Sir Henry waiting.

  ‘In Latin,’ William cursed. Another test.

  It invited him to attend on Sir Henry at the Paris Garden the following day to discuss his participation in the embassy.

  ‘Did I not tell you it would be so?’ said Oldcastle now at his breakfast.

  ‘You did,’ said William. ‘And urged me join you in Venice.’

  ‘You hesitate still?’ demanded Hemminges. ‘What is there here that holds you?’

  ‘This morning I went to look for a woman,’ William answered.

  ‘I know you to be the most frightful lecher of any man your age, Will, yet I pray you have not turned to boasting of it. I assume some connection between your answer and my question,’ said Oldcastle, ‘though if there is, I lack the wit to know it.’

  ‘Did you find her?’ asked Hemminges.

  ‘I did not.’ William stared at the ground.

  Oldcastle took his thoughtfulness for sadness. He clapped a hand on William’s stooped shoulders. ‘Plenty of señoritas in fair Venice,’ he said.

  ‘Signorinas,’ grunted Hemminges.

  ‘What’s that, John?’ said Oldcastle.

  ‘’S’not señoritas in Venice,’ said Hemminges.

  ‘Really? Good to know. Good to know.’ Oldcastle rolled his eyes, taking care that only William could see him do so. ‘The point stands,’ he continued. ‘No need for poxed London whores when the alabaster beauties of Venice await us.’

  ‘I went to see Sir Henry’s lover,’ said William, ‘the lady of the poem.’

  ‘Whatever for?’ asked Oldcastle.

  ‘She wasn’t there,’ said William.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where he said she’d be.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Keep up, Nick,’ said William. ‘I mean Sir Henry. I went to find the lady that he commissioned the poem for. The poem I went to deliver when I was set upon.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Oldcastle.

  ‘And she was not there,’ said William.

  ‘Oh,’ said Oldcastle in a tone that indicated he would not pretend to understand what was going on.

  ‘There wasn’t even a house at that address,’ said William. ‘Just an old priory turned to counting house.’

  ‘I do not find the idea that Sir Henry, a man I have seen walk about sucking on an inky quill as if it were a pipe with his shirt scarce buttoned, gave the wrong address as troublesome as you appear to do,’ said Oldcastle.

  With the authority of a man who had played nobility on many occasions, Oldcastle gave little esteem to a knight that he felt failed to live up to the dignity of his position.

  ‘True. True,’ said William. ‘Then again, Oldcastle, you do not play chess.’

  Oldcastle huffed. ‘Here I am trying to console you on your inability to find a woman even in London, a place that teems with them even as a river teems with trout, one need only reach in and tickle one out, and I am rewarded with calumny. Censured for my lack of learning. My inability to play chess hurled against me as though a rock ’gainst the stout walls . . .’

  ‘I mean –’ William held up a hand to staunch the flow ‘– that Sir Henry does. Play chess. And that, if you did, you would worry, as I do, that the game you think you are playing is not the one your opponent plays.’

  William told his companions Alice’s intelligence of the night. It took Oldcastle some minutes to cease his ribald commentary at news of another woman in William’s life. At last the sour looks of William and Hemminges penetrated. Oldcastle coughed and subsided.

  ‘Sir Henry set men on you in part to satisfy Sir Thomas Lucy and his man Hunt and in part to test you,’ said Hemminges. ‘That much is clear from Alice Hunt’s tale.’

  ‘What I cannot tell,’ said William, ‘is how deep the lies run. Was the whole business of Sir Henry’s mistress a baseless fabric, draped to gull us, to test us?’

  ‘Greene’s taunting in the verses Sir Henry had William pen for him has been real enough,’ said Hemminges.

  ‘As is the rogue’s anger at William that grew from it,’ nodded Oldcastle.

  ‘One thing is clear,’ said William. ‘There can be no talk of Venice now.’

  Oldcastle’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Why do you say that? Surely Venice is now the certain refuge from Greene’s anger and Hunt’s revenge.’

  ‘In the company of a liar who would see me beaten as a test?’

  ‘In the company of a careful man. One who weighed the value of his people before trusting them,’ said Hemminges with a shrug. ‘Before we did not know what Sir Henry was about. Now, thanks to Alice, we do. Neither for the poaching nor for the testing can you fault Sir Henry for the beating.’

  ‘Thank you, Hemminges,’ said William.

  Hemminges shrugged again. ‘I speak as I find. There may be much profit in being Sir Henry’s man of special trust. Think on that.’

  ‘Wise Hemminges,’ agreed Oldcastle, ‘Nestor of our troupe.’

  Oldcastle placed his hands on Hemminges’ and William’s shou
lders and turned from one to the other. ‘Are we not still poor players, Will? Before we feared the dangers of Europe. Now we know we travel in the company of a cautious man who will not take unnecessary risks with our person.’

  Oldcastle returned his hands to rest upon the prodigious bulk of his belly, guarding the precious cargo of his person.

  William felt less certain of the value of the knight’s move. He fretted. It was a fair guess that any move at all would be bad for the pawns. He had no illusions as to his status in the game. Let his friends do as they will. He would stay in London, where his ambitions lay. Now he needed only consider how he might do so in safety.

  William penned two letters. The first in answer to Sir Henry: he would meet him at the Paris Garden. He did not add that it would not be to take any place on his embassy but to throw his plotting in his face. William wished to have the pleasure of that answer facing the knight.

  The second to Alice Hunt, returned with the same messenger that took his answer to Sir Henry. That was a bolder message. When it was sent William ran to put in train all those things that would be needed to make good its boldness.

  Yet have I in me something dangerous

  William carried his ale to a shady corner of the Star, the tavern on Fleet Street where he had met with Constanza. The afternoon after Alice’s visit was unseasonably hot. William smeared sweat across his brow with his sleeve. He’d laboured hard in that heat. Now he took his rest and waited for his reward. He did not wait long before it came.

  William had spent the time since breakfast in the careful arrangement of a meeting in that private room in the Star. Such a useful room with its two entrances. Now the hour appointed came.

  The first guest came in by the back stairs. William could not see him but heard the footsteps on the floor above. Until he felt his stomach unclench he had not realised how he’d waited for that arrival, uncertain it would come.

  The next guests arrived by the front door a moment later. Two men, leather jerkins and scabbed knuckles both, shouldered their way into the tavern. Hunt’s paid villains. William felt fear flow over him as a cold wave. The thought of these brutes catching him alone made his bruises sting anew. They paid William’s shadowed figure in the corner no mind as they strode to the front stairs that climbed towards the private room.

  William rose and quickly followed. The thought of missing what would come next was a torture. He saw the two men reach the top of the stairs, shove open the door and enter. William raced up the stairs and pressed himself against the wall outside the room.

  ‘You Shakespeare?’ William heard one of the brutes grunt within.

  ‘Most certainly not,’ Robert Greene replied. ‘Do you take me for some metre ballad-monger?’

  The answer caused the pair of villains to set to muttering between themselves. Greene rapped his knuckles on the table to draw their attention. ‘Who are you doorstops in human form?’ he demanded.

  ‘You a poet?’ challenged the brute in answer.

  ‘That I am,’ Greene replied. ‘Though what business that is to you I cannot think. It bores me to try.’

  ‘You a playwright?’ the brute asked.

  ‘What is this? Who are you to question me?’

  ‘You a playwright?’ the brute pressed, ignoring Greene’s questions.

  ‘I am,’ said Greene. ‘Again, what that matter is to you I do not know. Now get out, oaf, I am expecting a lady.’

  ‘She’s not coming.’

  William heard the brute’s smile in his voice as he spoke.

  ‘Her father sent my brother and I to pass on a message to the poet, the playwright, the rogue that we should find waiting at the Star to besmirch the honour of a young maid.’

  Greene’s voice in answer did not rise to the insulting charge. In tones of boredom he asked, ‘What message is that?’

  William felt the blow land in the sound like a drum being struck, in the grunt as air left Greene’s lips, in the stumble of steps as Greene reeled back.

  ‘Damn you,’ Greene hissed, ‘that hurt.’

  ‘That is the nature of this message,’ the brute said. ‘We’ve just started to deliver it.’

  Greene coughed and held up his hand before him. ‘Wait, Hercules. I take it that it was no part of your message to let my clothes be ruined?’

  The brute shrugged. Greene took that for a licence and unlaced his cloak. As he smoothed its folds he spoke, ‘You’ve the wrong man, Hercules.’

  ‘Sure and you’ve said so,’ nodded the brute as he cracked his knuckles. ‘You are not Shakespeare. Yet here you are a poet, a playwright and in the place where this Shakespeare said he’d be and at the hour he claimed he’d be there.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean that,’ said Greene. ‘True, I am not Shakespeare but I meant that you had mistaken me for a gudgeon, an innocent.’

  Greene shook the cloak. ‘I’m not.’

  A sudden motion saw Greene toss the cloak over the closest brute’s head and with the same sweep, kick up. A howl. The brute fell to the floor, cloak still covering his head, clutching his agonised crotch. His brother stepped over him to hook Greene in the jaw. Greene staggered back into the chair behind him. He gripped the chair back and hefted it like a club.

  Painful fingers gripped William’s arm from behind and dragged him down the stairs.

  ‘This was not wise, Will,’ said Hemminges as he thrust the lad out the tavern door to the sound, from the room above, of wood splintering.

  I have seen Sackerson loose twenty times, and have taken him by the chain

  As soon hold back a crashing wave as halt Hemminges’ driving of him down the street.

  ‘I’m going with you willingly, John,’ protested Will.

  Hemminges said nothing nor slowed his pace till they had passed through Ludgate. Then, at the river’s edge, he stopped.

  ‘Jesu Christ, Will.’ Hemminges looked in all directions save at William. ‘Jesu Christ.’ His eyes finally came to rest on William.

  Hemminges had that strange power to compel speech by saying nothing. William found himself making what explanation he could.

  ‘I had two enemies, John. Why not have one confront the other?’

  Hemminges shook his head.

  ‘Hunt’s paid villains will not come again,’ William argued. ‘They may even ask of Hunt why he did not warn them of the dangers of poets and playwrights.’

  ‘And Greene?’ Hemminges asked.

  ‘Will be wary of a man he dismissed as a “metre ballad-monger” but who has shown himself to be reckoned with.’

  ‘Then you do not know Greene. This is not your small-town rogue, Will. He will not quake at the sound of your boots. He’ll dab his split lip and put the bloody handkerchief in a glass case as a symbol of his revenge to come.’

  Hemminges paced out to the river’s bank. He bent, picked up a stone and hurled it out into the river. He stamped back over to William.

  ‘Clever is not wise, Will. You might have slid below Greene’s gaze had you done nothing. Instead you poked the scorpion’s nest.’

  ‘I’ll outwit him again,’ William said.

  ‘No doubt, but why would you need to do so at all but for this business?’ Hemminges asked. ‘You’re clever, Will, but others can be clever too without diminishing you. It need not all be tilts and tournaments.’

  Hemminges threw another stone into the river.

  ‘How’d you know?’

  ‘That you’d be at the Star?’ said Hemminges. ‘Followed you. I saw that look on your face this morning when you sent the message to Sir Henry. Later saw you send the message to Greene. Later still saw Greene go into the tavern where you waited and those two villains follow shortly after.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said William.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For caring.’

  Hemminges snorted. ‘Where to now?’ he asked.

  ‘To the Paris Garden to meet with Sir Henry and to talk of Venice.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’<
br />
  ‘To keep me out of trouble?’

  Hemminges laughed. ‘Trouble is your home as much as the air the birds’ or the sea the fishes’, but at least if I’m there I might help you out of it.’

  One man picked out of ten thousand

  Hemminges and William were met at the Paris Garden’s gate by Sir Henry’s man, Watkins.

  ‘I’ve seen that nose before,’ said William.

  Watkins simply pointed to the booth where Sir Henry sat alone.

  ‘The cut on your hand is healing well,’ said William as he passed.

  Watkins held up that hand to stop Hemminges following. With a shrug, Hemminges tossed his head to show William where he would sit waiting. William passed through the crowd. The show had yet to start. The crowd milled about the ring, yet to settle. William’s thoughts were also stirred. He’d been set to bite his thumb at Sir Henry for his tricks and for the beating. Now he was not so sure. Perhaps Greene would not be warned off by the trouble William had brought on him, nor Hunt distracted from his vengeance. Meanwhile, with his friends and patron gone to Venice, what employment would remain for William in London? Was Venice a chance for advancement not to be passed up?

  He pulled back the curtain and entered the private booth. Sir Henry sat alone. When William entered he signalled for him to sit.

  ‘You had me beaten.’

  ‘I think you managed to bring that fate on yourself,’ Sir Henry answered. His voice was calm contrast to William’s heat.

  ‘Your reason?’ demanded William.

  Sir Henry turned to him. ‘You taunted that man Hunt by playing with his daughter. You think nothing follows?’

  ‘Alice Hunt is no plaything.’

  ‘Oh, I know that. A woman of qualities. You may appreciate that now,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Did you then?’

  William said nothing. In the ring below the first bear was brought in and the crowd bayed with excitement for the dogs to be brought. Sir Henry gestured again to the bench. This time William sat.

  ‘You have not been to Europe before?’ Sir Henry asked.