‘Of course,’ Prospero said. He rose and bowed to Sir Henry. ‘Please convey to your master my wishes for a bountiful rest. We shall have a long day of travel in the morning, but the day after, Venice.’
In the cup a spider steeped
William and Oldcastle were shown to a small bedroom at the back of the inn in which two cots were made up with linens. The innkeeper left them with a stub of candle and a peevish bow. The door shut behind them.
William and Oldcastle sat on their cots across from each other, their heads bowed low together in conversation.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Oldcastle.
‘We’ve no choice now,’ said William. ‘Refuse his hospitality and he’ll grow suspicious.’
‘I should have thought more carefully. It’s one thing to fool a man for a night, it’s quite another to maintain the illusion over many days.’ Oldcastle’s voice was tight with tension and exhaustion. ‘Our cozening will be discovered. Then what? Nothing good.’
‘You’re right, Oldcastle. This performance will define us.’
‘No doubt. Fail in it and it will be our lives,’ said Oldcastle.
‘Let us just to Venice,’ William offered, ‘then we can find excuse to part ways, deliver the packet and be gone.’
‘We cannot linger in Venice, William,’ Oldcastle said. ‘I haven’t the stomach for it.’
‘You’ve stomach to spare, Nick.’
‘William. I’m serious,’ Oldcastle answered.
‘Forgive me, Nick. Forgive me,’ William said. ‘A serious day, with serious business in’t.’ He held up a weary hand even as his head drooped. ‘To Venice and then gone.’
The two undressed and lay on their cots. After a moment Oldcastle spoke into the darkness.
‘I never thought to see Hemminges fall. I’ve seen him best better before.’
‘The man was armed and horsed,’ William said.
‘Still.’
‘Even Hercules must yield to odds.’ William spoke gently.
‘So,’ said Oldcastle.
The sad conversation faltered. After a pause they said more in whispers, but it was not clear if it was to each other or to the darkness.
‘By the Mass, I’d swear he lived, yet,’ said Oldcastle.
‘It was the saddest scene,’ William said.
Oldcastle sighed. ‘I can’t believe him gone.’
William heard Oldcastle try to choke his sob with a cough.
‘I think I shall sleep,’ Oldcastle said. ‘Sleep may mend this care.’
They said no more till morning.
Outside in the courtyard Prospero could be seen, had any been awake to view the meeting, talking by the gate. He spoke to a squat man with a broad-brimmed hat and a red scarf just visible between the folds of his cloak.
‘You’ve failed, Borachio,’ the Count said.
‘My lord, you know?’ replied Borachio.
‘That the English Ambassador escaped your ambush? I do.’
‘How?’
‘How, my lord,’ Prospero reproved him with a wiggled finger. ‘He’s here with his steward.’
‘I’ll deal with him straight, my lord,’ said Borachio.
The Count stopped him. ‘You’ll do no such thing.’
‘My lord?’
‘Even this wantwit of an innkeeper will notice if his guests go to bed whole but in the morning are to be found only in parts. No, no. You are a good, blunt instrument Borachio. This, however, calls less for the club than the poniard.’
‘As you say, my lord,’ said Borachio.
‘Don’t bristle, Borachio,’ admonished the Count. ‘You’re not a hedgehog.’ Prospero smiled a wicked smile, all teeth. ‘And if you were, your spines would not even dent the leather of my shoes were I to step on you.’
Borachio felt the night grow colder.
‘My lord, the failure was not mine,’ he said. ‘All went according to the scheme save that headstrong child Conrad charged after the ’scaping party and was killed in the chase.’
‘Then he has paid for his fault has he not?’ said Prospero.
The sullen Borachio made no reply.
‘Were you not the leader, Borachio?’ asked the Count. ‘Was not the scheme yours?’
The Count took silence for assent to his questions. ‘Then do not seek to pass the responsibility for its failure on to others.’
‘I do not, my lord,’ said Borachio.
The noise that the Count made through his pursing lips indicated that he remained to be convinced. ‘It’s no matter, Borachio,’ he said. ‘There will be opportunity enough to make recompense in the days to come.’
Prospero’s attention shifted from the pleasures of unnerving his brutish servant. ‘All dead save these two in the inn?’
‘All, by my count.’
‘A shame that our man amongst the embassy was killed.’
‘That was the scheme. No chance for double-dealing. The Cardinal ordered it.’
‘The scheme had the Ambassador dead too. Living, a spy still in his party would have had use.’
Borachio shrugged.
‘You searched the dead?’ Prospero asked.
‘We did,’ Borachio replied.
‘By your silence I take it you did not find the letters.’
‘We did not.’
‘The bodies?’ the Count asked.
‘Buried.’
Prospero paced a little, tapping his lips with a finger as he moved.
‘Your failure to obtain the letters is most unfortunate. Who knows what else you have missed. This English Ambassador is a curious creature. How oddly he is suited. I have never seen the like before. I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour? Everywhere.’
Prospero stopped next to his servant and turned dancing eyes on him. ‘There is something unseen here. For that reason alone we should stay our hands.’
He tapped at his teeth. ‘Even if it were not so, my spirit wills it,’ he said. ‘The arrival of the Ambassador into my care presents many opportunities.’
‘I thought our orders were to have him killed,’ said Borachio.
‘Thought? Thought? Oh, my dear Borachio. It is not for your thinking that you are employed, and if it were then you are sore overpaid.’
Prospero’s mind dismissed Borachio and travelled through schemes and stratagems choosing one that best suited his purpose and his artistry. Borachio interrupted him.
‘His Holiness will wish to know how matters proceed,’ Borachio said.
Prospero turned his cynic’s brow on the sturdy little man. He wondered, not for the first time, whether Borachio planned to betray him with a behind-hand stab. If he did so, would it be at the expressed wish of the new Pope? Oh Borachio, you are such a useful villain, Prospero thought. Were it not so, I’d kill you here and now. As it is, I shall wait until your use is all used up. Then will I serve the servant for his double-dealing.
In the shadow of evening Prospero’s features, smiling wickedly, stood sharp set. Being caught in that gaze, Borachio wondered what thoughts lay behind it. He was angry with himself at the fear that shivered him.
‘Leave this to me, Borachio,’ said Prospero. ‘We have a double mission and this fat fool of an ambassador may serve me in both before we make disposal of him.’
‘As you will it, my lord,’ said Borachio.
‘Always, Borachio. Always.’
What may man within him hide
William woke to discover Oldcastle already risen. Oldcastle up at such an hour was a sight rarer than the phoenix. William was about to make play of it when something in the way that Oldcastle stood stopped him. The old man had never looked older than he did in that moment. The great frame was braced against the window’s ledge. Though it seemed as if the scene surveyed beyond his bowed head suggested his thoughts were elsewhere.
‘Nick?’ William said.
Oldcastle straightened. He let out a sigh. Then, after a moment, slapped his
hand upon the ledge.
‘Up, lad,’ he said. ‘I’ll have no slovenly fellows in my service. We must be about our business.’
When he turned to William he had a smile on his face for all that his eyes were still red-rimmed. William threw off the thin sheet of his cot and pulled on his shoes.
Downstairs Prospero was already at his breakfast. He rose and acknowledged Sir Henry’s presence with a bow. A hand pointed to the vacant seat beside him. Oldcastle gratefully took it and managed to suppress a look of disappointment at the strange fare put before him in place of his beloved sausage and eggs. William sat next to him. Prospero’s other eyebrow rose to match its fellow’s level. He turned pointedly to speak to Oldcastle.
‘Is it customary in England for the servants to dine with their masters?’
William cursed inwardly. He had forgot himself and his place. Fortunate for him that Oldcastle was more alert that morning.
‘Not in the ordinary course, my lord,’ answered Oldcastle. ‘However, Fallow, in addition to being my steward, is also my bastard and I indulge him.’
‘I thought he seemed young to hold such a position in your household,’ said Prospero.
Was it William’s fancy or did Prospero seem to soften slightly in his attitude to William. It was hard to tell from his tone of voice. There seemed for a moment to be a genuine smile on the face that had, till then, born only a sardonic one.
‘Do you smell a fault in it?’ Oldcastle beamed good-heartedly. ‘True he came too saucily into this world before he was called for, but his mother had a merry eye and there was good sport in his making.’
Oldcastle paused to gaze on William as if reliving the moment of his conception in his mind.
‘Would that her field had been as barren as her name had promised,’ he said. ‘Still, we must acknowledge our sins if we are to be forgiven them, and the bastard must be recognised. “There’s no pleasure in permitted sin. Forbidden things are most desired”, as the poet says.’
Oldcastle turned a smug regard on William as he deployed words of Ovid that William had once admonished him with outside a Shoreditch brothel. William restrained a rolling of his eyes only by a titanic effort of will. Oldcastle rounded his speech off by ruffling William’s hair, to the irritation of William and the great amusement of Prospero.
‘One cannot wish the fault undone when the issue is so proper,’ Prospero said with a nod to William. ‘I know something of bastards. Why treat a man as base when his mind’s as sharp and frame as firm as legitimate issue? I have no time for customs when that custom leads us false.’
At that moment the travellers’ breakfast was interrupted by the arrival of a solid man with a surly look. Ugly, as if his maker had carelessly reached out a hand and smudged the clay of his face before it baked.
‘My lord, the horses stand in readiness,’ said Borachio.
The ugly man stared with impertinent intensity at Oldcastle and William. Prospero seemed not to notice his servant’s ill manners.
‘Good, Borachio.’ Prospero stood and wiped his lips with a linen handkerchief. ‘Then we must be off. We have some way to ride before we reach the barge that will carry us the rest of the way.’
Oldcastle sat like a sack of suet on his horse. There had been a moment when William feared that Oldcastle’s poor seat would give their counterfeit away. Oldcastle, whose mind seemed to be working with a clearness that William was not used to, had excused himself by reference to injuries taken in the previous day’s tumult. An explanation that seemed to satisfy both the Count and his servant.
William had taken an instant dislike to the servant, Borachio. There was nothing on which to pin this dislike. William was not so foolish as to take the man’s ugliness for an ugly nature. Yet he distrusted him, and that mistrust built when the small party rode past the place of the previous day’s battle and found it empty.
‘It was here he fell, I’ll swear it,’ Oldcastle said as he looked about. ‘There, upon the trampled ground, blood still.’
Of all other signs of battle there were none. Even the players’ cart had disappeared.
‘Where can it be?’ Oldcastle said. He trammelled the sides of his horse, seeking to move it deeper into the woods in search of Hemminges’ body.
Prospero looked bored.
‘No doubt the robbers sought to hide the signs of their misdeeds,’ the Count offered.
Whatever softening there had been in Prospero at breakfast had been replaced with the same disdain William had noted at their first meeting. It made him wonder what made the Count wish to share his journey with the English Ambassador. Christian charity? The bond of nobles? Simple curiosity? William doubted each.
‘Robbers do this? I think not, my lord,’ said William. ‘Take and run I warrant you is your highway robber’s business. Not this. Not disguises and ambuscades.’
William could not understand it. He had already ridden to the ridge and seen that ahead too there was no sign of the English party, neither baggage nor body. That robbers might steal the carts and the luggage he could understand, but not that they would trouble themselves to remove the bodies.
‘As you wish, Master Fallow,’ replied the Count. ‘Perhaps you have had more experience with thieves.’
William drew breath to give this barb sharp reply but Borachio cut across him to speak in Latin more crumpled than Oldcastle’s.
‘Wolves.’
‘What’s he say?’ Oldcastle had rejoined the group. William looked at Borachio without speaking. The man had a smirking smile on his face.
‘Wolves, my lords,’ said Borachio. ‘They will drag the bodies to their den to feast upon them at their leisure.’
‘What’s he say, William?’ asked Oldcastle. ‘What’s this talk of “wolves”?’
Vicious little man, thought William. To proffer this suggestion when he knows both that it must be false and that the thought of it alone will give much sadness to the distressed man before him. William was glad that between Borachio and Oldcastle lay so little learning that each could understand but one word in five of the other.
‘Nothing, Sir Henry,’ said William. No purpose to upsetting Oldcastle further. ‘He says he does not know. He says it cannot be wolves, for there are none in these parts.’
Impatient for the off, Prospero spoke. ‘Come, Sir Henry. If this sad business is concluded, as it is clear it must be, then we should ride.’
Oldcastle nodded but did not move, his head still scanning the scene for sign of Hemminges’ body. Prospero waited a moment more and then simply turned his horse and began to trot along the road. The sound of hoofbeats on the earth stirred Oldcastle and with a final glance at the ill-fated woods he drew a great breath and spurred his horse’s sides, trotting after Prospero. William was left with the smirking Borachio. The man’s arms were propped across the horn of his saddle. Borachio slowly raised one to make an obsequious gesture that William lead off. William did.
As he rode William tried to decide whether he would be the better man for finding a way to wipe that smirk from Borachio’s face or for rising above his provocation. He knew which would give him the greater pleasure. He passed the rest of the day’s ride in contemplation of it.
The brief and the tedious of it
Prospero, not confined by the need to travel with a great train of baggage and with discretion as Sir Henry had been, chose to use the canals that crossed Italy to travel to Venice. A few hours’ ride from the fateful woods, the small party had changed from horses to a barge. In the company of two Savoyard merchants who joined with goods for the markets of Venice, the barge hauled them forth while Prospero reclined in cushioned comfort and Oldcastle made small and stilted conversation through the medium of William.
The closeness of their travelling arrangements, the three men tucked neatly into a cabin at the front of the barge, along with chairs, tables and, strangely, an elaborately painted chest, added to William’s unease. He noticed for the first time that Prospero was delightfully perfu
med. William distrusted it. No man should smell so good. He was also conscious of his own rank sweat and resented the contrast. He resented more finding himself put in the role of secretary of small value save as a mouthpiece for Oldcastle when his Latin failed him. That burden greater since Oldcastle, growing melancholic, had been robbed of the ability to make more than the briefest of answers, which William felt obliged to supplement for fear of offending their host.
In that ambition William seemed destined for failure. At least with respect to his own presence, which Prospero appeared to find increasingly irritating.
‘Scribble, scribble, scribble, Master Fallow. What is’t with you and your constant scratchings?’
William looked up as Prospero loomed over him.
‘My commonplace book, my lord,’ William said.
‘And what is that?’ asked Prospero.
‘A book in which I make note of matters of interest. It is a habit I acquired at school and have carried with me ever since. I find my thoughts find form and substance as I write them, when in my head they remained only ghosts.’
William gave greater explanation than he had intended. He was annoyed with himself that he did so in an attempt to win over the goodwill of the arrogant prince who stood before him. The more so since it had no effect.
‘Are you still a schoolboy, then?’ said Prospero.
‘Of course not, my lord,’ answered William.
Prospero cut him off. ‘Then kindly do not weary me with your schoolboy antics.’
William tried one more tack. ‘I have also made some attempts at poetry.’
‘Faugh!’ Prospero interrupted. ‘An art I cannot bear. A dry wheel grating in an axle-tree is kinder to my ear than mincing poetry. I counsel against it, Master Fallow. There is no profit in poetry.’
The journey was thus both faster than the slow march of Sir Henry’s travelling embassy and more comfortable, at least in the method of travel. The strange company and perilous position William and Oldcastle found themselves in prevented true repose.
Almost as unhappy and uncomfortable in the journey was Borachio. Nightly on their three-day journey he pleaded with Prospero that they might make an end of the English.
The Spy of Venice Page 20