The Trade Secret

by Robert Newman

  ‘You are the cork that bobs up from black subterranean seas, Nat-jan! You rise like smoke from pagan chimneys. You keep your footing on the sinking ferry. How can they ever drown you? How can they crush you? How can they quench your spark?’

  Part Two

  1

  Cheering crowds lined the route from outside the city gates to Castel Sant’ Angelo. Half Rome had turned out to witness the legendary Persians, fellow heirs of a great classical civilization, ancient Rome’s most formidable foe. And the Great Persian Embassy did not disappoint. They wore bright silk turbans, rode magnificent white stallions, and altogether looked as if they had ridden straight out of the pages of a romance.

  First Secretary of the Embassy, Uruch Bey, looked up at the children perched in trees who were shaking linden blossom down upon the parade. He cupped his hands and caught a falling blossom. One hundred cannons boomed an artillery salute from Castel Sant’ Angelo. Uruch’s giant white horse reared up. Using just his thighs and hips, he wheeled the horse to a standstill. This display of horsemanship set the crowd roaring,

  ‘Evviva! Bravo!’

  He blew the linden blossom from his hands towards some young women who screamed with delight. He touched his heart, lips and turban with his fingertips and they screamed some more.

  Uruch trotted his horse forward towards Hoseyn Ali Beg, whom the Romans welcomed with chants of Genghis! Genghis! The grizzled old ambassador grinned from ear to ear, laying one hand on his heart and waving now up to the eaves and now down to the smallest child, as one and all cheered Genghis! Genghis! Uruch chuckled. It was true, it was true! Why had he never seen it before? Ha! That was exactly who old Hoseyn looked like. Genghis! Only Genghis with a headache and a bad back! Or Genghis’s father!

  Up ahead rode little, puffed up Antonio, dazzling in his steel doublet and blue puffball trunks, his silver ruff on his neck and shiny silver silk turban. He waved his arm like Julius Caesar home in triumph, as if he were an emperor who had taken all these Persians prisoner!

  Behind him were his real captives: his overworked English servants dressed in carnation taffeta for the occasion. Uruch glimpsed Nat Bramble, his oil factor’s friend and accomplice. Hard to believe this was Antonio’s youngest servant. Travel had scored vertical grooves in his cheeks and there were black moons under his eyes.

  Uruch wheeled his horse and rode the last stretch alongside the open carriage of Cardinal Aldobrandini, the Pope’s right-hand man and military commander. As they reached Castel Sant’ Angelo, he exchanged an excited look with the Cardinal. Together they watched the ambassadors dismount. This was it. It was really happening! It was glorious.

  Trumpets blared a fanfare, choristers burst into song, and the Great Persian Embassy’s two ambassadors proceeded up the steps. The Papal Guard locked halberds against the surging, cheering, crowd.

  The ambassadors stopped halfway up the stairs. Uruch watched an argument in dumb show which seemed to be about who led and who followed.

  Anthony shoved Hoseyn aside. The crowd fell silent. So silent that Uruch heard Hoseyn Ali Beg’s fist land on Anthony’s chin. Cardinal Aldobrandini placed red silk fingers over his eyes.

  The two ambassadors wrestled on the steps of the Castel Sant’Angelo. There was some work inside - a bite, a knee to the groin - and then Anthony broke free. He trotted up the steps. Hoseyn grabbed the hem of his cloak and yanked. Anthony toppled backwards, his silk turban bouncing away into the crowd, and when he got to his feet, the back of his hair was soaked in blood. He swayed for a moment, and then ran up the steps.

  Hoseyn had just reached the door when Anthony spun him round and caught him a loud cracking blow to the chin. Hoseyn’s head rocked back, but the next instant he had one hand on Anthony’s throat while punching his face with the other. Anthony hooked Hoseyn’s legs out from under him and both ambassadors tumbled through the doors of Castel Sant’Angelo.

  The ambassadors had arrived. The crowd let out a mocking cheer.

  First Secretary Uruch Bey dismounted and climbed the bloodstained steps with as much dignity as he could muster, but he was scarcely through the doors when he found himself on the floor, trying to pull the ambassadors apart, and getting clipped with a couple of blows for his pains.

  Uruch couldn’t find purchase on Anthony’s steel doublet, so he slid one hand in its waist and one in its neck and lifted Anthony bodily as if hefting an empty samovar. He bashed the samovar against the oak-paneled wall, and let the wretch drop to the floor.

  ‘Lock the door!’ ordered Hoseyn Ali Beg, pressing a wadded silk handkerchief to his bloody mouth. Uruch did as he was bid and pocketed the key.

  As Anthony climbed to his feet, Hoseyn shouted:

  ‘I am the Shah’s ambassador! Not you!

  ‘No, I’m the ambassador! This whole Embassy was my idea. Everybody knows that. You heard the crowds cheer me!’

  ‘Treason! They were cheering the Shah not you!’

  Uruch broke in.

  ‘When Shah Abbas,’ he hissed at Anthony, ‘hears that you attacked his Ambassador during the civic reception in Rome, I tell you he will deal with you like your Queen dealt with Essex.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘She cut the traitor’s head off last month after he tried to murder her in her bed.’

  ‘Essex?’

  ‘Essex!’ barked Hoseyn. ‘That’s the fellow! I heard it too! Essex!’

  Anthony opened and closed his mouth to speak but no words came. He looked from Uruch to Hoseyn. Tears flowed down his cheeks. He must get away from them. He must grieve alone. His heart was breaking. He fled past Uruch to the door. Locked. Tears stung his eyes. He could hardly see and stumbled as he ran to a pair of floor-to-ceiling double-doors. He rattled the knob, banged and kicked the doors, until they gave. Here at last would be a little room where he could try to comprehend the enormity of this loss. Stumbling through the double-doors, he found himself not in a little anteroom, but out on the balcony.

  A huge cheer went up from the crowd down below. Anthony raised his hand in salutation. His tears could not be seen so he didn’t need to dry them. Just wave. His face a rictus, he waved and waved, while sobbing so heavily that his steel doublet bashed and clashed against the stone parapet, drawing tiny sparks.

  2

  A fortnight later, Uruch crossed the courtyard of the Embassy’s Palazzo della Rovere lodgings with a parcel under his arm intended for his oil agent’s friend. Reintroducing himself to Nat Bramble, he was shocked by the venomous scowl that greeted him. Then, as if there were no such thing as hierarchy, the servant, his lip curling, accused the First Secretary of betraying him to Anthony on the night of the barn dance. How else, he wanted to know, were Anthony and Elkin able to waylay him on the road back to Kulsum’s barn? Who else but Uruch could possibly have told Anthony where to find him? Uruch adjusted the cuffs of his dove-grey satin kurta, and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I did not know you were a runaway,’ he replied. ‘Did you not tell me the oil venture was Antonio’s project? …Talking of runaways, I thought these might fit you. They belonged to the defectors who left us for the Jesuits.’

  Uruch handed Nat a bundled assortment of clothes balled in twine.

  As they sat down together on the courtyard’s stone bench, Uruch noticed how stiffly the servant moved. The careful way Nat propped the small of his back with the bundle of clothes was the precautionary act of an old farm labourer hoping to preserve his spine for one more season, not a young man of, what, nineteen? Antonio was a slave driver. Whatever hell came of Antonio’s Papal audience, it was at least a chance for the haggard boy to sit in the courtyard an hour.

  ‘The packet ship’s just sailed,’ lamented Uruch, ‘or else I could have included a word to Darius Nouredini from you.’

  ‘When’s the next one?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps not till we get to Lisbon.’

  Nat’s spirit sank.

  ‘Whenever you next write, you must tell Darius that I defended his g
ood name from Mani Babachoi’s slanders.’

  Nat told the First Secretary how Mani and Darius both loved Gol and how Mani had by chance bought the very poem that Darius had written for her and read it to her first, Nat then told Uruch about when he last saw Mani.

  The Embassy had not been many days out of Isfahan, when it crossed paths, at the Kashan caravanserai, with soldiers on their way to the front, amongst who was Mani Babachoi, Darius’s rival for the love of Gol. They soon fell into an argument when Mani said that Darius had no right to seek Gol’s hand because he was already engaged.

  ‘He earned the right,’ Nat snapped back, ‘when he went down into a well of fire! When have you ever done her so much honour, Mani Babachoi?’

  ‘I have scars.’

  ‘Yours were done for show, for empty ceremony. His scars are marks of love. He got them trying to free himself to marry Gol.’

  ‘Well, he can forget about that,’ said Mani triumphantly. ‘Gol has done me the honour of consenting to be my wife.’

  ‘Then yours will be a marriage built on a lie, since it rests on falsehoods about my friend.’

  Nat had stormed off, heart beating and expecting Mani Babachoi’s musket stock to crush the back of his skull. But when he dared turn his head, Mani Babachoi was still standing where he had left him.

  ‘Be sure and put it in your letter,’ said Nat as the sky darkened above the Palazzo della Rovere courtyard, ‘that I argued his worthiness for Gol Zarafshani’s hand.’ Uruch pretended to commit her name to memory:

  ‘Gol Zarafshani.’

  In truth, not only was the First Secretary only half-listening, he would never even have sat down with an errand boy in the first place, still less suffer his rudeness, did he not plan to employ Nat as a spy.

  The black clouds began to rain on the courtyard. They were sheltered where they sat, but Nat shivered and picked at the bundle of apostates’ clothes and pulled out a quilted black twill coat. The coat reached below his knees. It had a warm lining, thick in the nap. He could wear it all through a London winter, that is if he ever got back.

  ‘I have seen you,’ said Uruch, ‘delivering your master’s sealed letters and baton scrolls to the Spanish ambassador.’

  ‘And I have seen you at the Spanish ambassadors, too,’ said Nat, happy in his new black coat. ‘Seen you there so often, indeed, that I thought you were to run off and join a monastery like those other three Persians!’

  Uruch chuckled as if Nat had said something very witty, then said:

  ‘The ambassador will pay in gold to read Antonio’s letters to kings or queens.’

  ‘Huh! Anthony will kill me first.’

  Uruch pulled a silver signet ring off his finger.

  ‘This is the Safavid seal ring, official letter stamp of Shah Abbas. Antonio has one, Hoseyn Mirza has one, and this one is for you. You open the letter, make a copy, seal it with this. How will your master ever know? He won’t. He can’t. Here, take the ring.”

  ‘No, Uruch, you must excuse me.’

  Uruch nodded at Nat’s seemly Ta’rof, the etiquette that demanded that one refuse a gift several times before accepting.

  ‘Nothing threatens the Alliance more than Sir Anthony’s intrigues,’ he said. ‘Disclose his secret proposals and you will save the embassy.’

  ‘What’s the embassy to me?’ asked Nat.

  ‘The safety of the Isfahan to Tabriz road, upon which my oil merchant, the esteemed Darius Nouredini, must travel, depends on the success of this embassy.’

  Nat held out his hand for the ring.

  ‘If Anthony ever finds it, I’ll just say it was there when you gave me the coat.’

  ‘Very clever,’ said the First Secretary. ‘Very clever. I knew I had picked the right man for the job. Now be sure to bring me copies of any letters that Antonio writes to any Prince or Pope, won’t you?’

  ‘At your service, First Secretary.’

  Nat bowed and walked into the rain, with his little bundle under his arms. Halfway across the courtyard, however, he turned round and called back.

  ‘Oh, one more thing, Uruch. This is a dangerous undertaking and I ask you to give me a solemn pledge.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘Leave me that grey satin kurta when you defect to the Spanish.’

  3

  Hoseyn Ali Beg looked down onto the rain-lashed Piazza Scossa Cavalli. The rainstorm had turned day into night. Italian servants lit candles and withdrew. At least these candles were wax and not tallow, the animal fat they were burning in the English quarters. How he missed the steady cheerful light of a string of proper oil lanterns! Flickering candlelight made him feel he was hunkering in some cave. The door opened and Uruch walked in with that picking step of his.

  ‘What were you talking about with Antonio’s boy all this time?’

  ‘I gave him the signet ring just as you told me to do.’

  ‘And the rest of the time?’

  Hoseyn was jumpy. Three of his staff had defected from the Embassy. If the First Secretary turned apostate, as well, the Shah would summon Hoseyn home for execution. Since the Jesuits gave Uruch that Bible they had so helpfully translated into Farsi, Uruch’s nose was hardly out of it. Uruch was as happy in Rome as Hoseyn himself was miserable. A little too happy. Something was afoot. ‘What else did you talk about with him? What else?’

  Intending to shame Hoseyn, the First Secretary began to relate every last petty detail he could remember of his oil factor’s love triangle involving a soldier and some woman called Gol Zarafshani. To Uruch’s dismay, Hoseyn, far from being ashamed, asked question after question about the love triangle, as keenly if they were going over the Papal order of ceremony or something important or seemly. Uruch couldn’t believe his ears. He was appalled. Perhaps Antonio had cracked the old fellow’s skull during their fight on the Castel Sant’ Angelo steps. One would think that after such a humiliating spectacle as that appalling brawl, Hoseyn’s every word and deed would now be bent towards regaining at least a modicum of ambassadorial dignity. But no, he was hungry for servant tittle-tattle about who kissed whom in the barnyard!

  ‘You are meeting the Pope tomorrow, Hoseyn Mirza! What does any of this matter?’

  The Ambassador sat down cross-legged on the rug before the fire, and gestured for Uruch to join him. Uruch sat opposite and waited. Hoseyn seemed lost in memory. He stroked his drooping white moustache, which was like a pair of twin compasses.

  ‘Many years ago,’ he said, ‘Atash Zarafshani and I both served a governor who was executed for embezzlement. I replaced the governor, whom I’d served as deputy, but Shah Abbas sent the rest of the governor’s staff, every last man, to the Uzbeg front, and not as administrators or quartermasters, either, but as foot-soldiers. All except me. I don’t know why.’

  ‘He knew your character, Hoseyn Mirza.’

  ‘The same crimes for which the governor was executed were not unknown to his deputy. At that time in my life. In that place. Never since, I want you to know, never since. I was the governor’s deputy, Atash Zarafshani was just an assistant notary and completely innocent. But Atash suffered, and I was made governor. He was terribly injured in the war, disfigured, and I was given a seat in the majlis.’

  Hoseyn told Uruch how it was this new chasm in rank, and not the disfigurement, that made things difficult between them. There was an awkward New Year visit - Gol was a little girl then. Down there in the poor, clay-built part of Isfahan, a fur-trimmed majlis minister was visiting a humble pigeon breeder and crippled soldier. Impossible to compliment him on his roof garden or his birds without the air of condescension. So when Atash Zarafshani thanked Hoseyn Ali Beg for the great honour of the visit, they both knew that a little less honour would have meant a great deal more friendship. He hadn’t seen him since.

  Hoseyn stuck out his bottom lip.

  ‘Guilt weighs down your soul,’ said Uruch.

  ‘My guilt’s no help to Atash Zarafshani - or his family. What would have helped my old f
riend was if I had been able to send him the truth about Darius Nouredini’s innocence on this packet ship. That would have helped.’

  ‘His daughter has another suitor.’

  ‘A soldier in a war that is worse than any we have ever known thanks to this Embassy having failed to deliver the alliance upon which hung any hope of victory. That’s why we lost those three defectors: the prospect of a Turkish war is a stronger argument for apostasy than any number of Farsi Bibles. A letter! I will send a letter to Atash Zarafshani, and you must find a mail ship soon. The one great merit of Darius Nouredini’s suit is that he is not a soldier. If this whole Embassy achieves nothing more than clearing his name and persuading Atash that your oil merchant is a fit husband for Gol, then at least the years will not have been wasted.’

  ‘Indeed, Hoseyn Mirza. For is it not written in the book that he who saves one man saves the whole world?’

  ‘Which book is that, Uruch? Which book is that?’

  4

  Sir Thomas Sherley’s ship the Golden Dragon was anchored off Kea, nearest of the Cyclades to Athens. A full moon lit four boats rowing from ship to shore as Sir Thomas led eighty men in a raid on the almond-shaped island. They crossed a broad plain and began the steep two-mile climb to the hilltop town of Ioulida.

  As they slogged uphill, the raiding party muttered behind his back. If you are going to attack by the light of a full moon, they complained, why not just attack by day and be done? One hour later, Sir Thomas stood in a deserted plaza in the centre of Ioulida, splashing his lantern’s light up and down up the white walls of empty white houses and locked white churches.

  Tallest and eldest of the three Sherley brothers, Sir Thomas pushed his long brown hair off his wide forehead. Broad shouldered, broad-nosed, his open mouth and knitted brow gave him a baffled yet determined look, dogged and uncomprehending. He looked like a gentleman farmer on his way back from market, stopping in his tracks upon realising that he has been shortchanged.