The Trade Secret

by Robert Newman

  Were it not for this incubus, this Bramble, his letters from jail would have reached his family and he would have been set free. At the very least, his father or Anthony, or Cessalye his sister, would have sent him the money to afford a prison servant and meat and a fire in his cell. Instead he had lain buried alive in an unmarked grave - and now he knew why. The name of the beast was Bramble.

  Thomas stroked the bald patches in his hair. They were curious gaps. They came from where he had rubbed the back of his head against the dungeon wall for hours on end trying not to lose his mind.

  The poisonous Bramble had made Anthony suffer too. He had stolen hundreds of Anthony’s silver dollars, as well as a letter about Turkish naval strength, which he had sold to the Venetians who had expelled Anthony. An exile in Spain, Anthony had not been able to raise funds in time to save their father, Old Sir Thomas Sherley, from being arrested for debt on the public highway while riding alongside King James himself. There you had the upside-down sickness of the time: a base villain - named after the bush he’d been whelped under - could unseat the King’s right-hand man.

  Thomas grabbed his long hair in both fists. All the pain and grief and torture and fear and lice that he would have been spared but for this one demon, this incubus, this foul forging evil villain Bramble! He kicked the wall, denting the plaster with the toe of his boot. He picked up a chair and dashed it on the floorboards, screaming. He heard the muezzin outside his cell calling the faithful to prayer. He heard the spanner knocking against the bolt in the iron hoop around his head as it tightened. Bellowing in fear and fury, he snatched up a chair leg to defend himself, but then stopped. That knocking wasn’t a spanner on an iron ring around his head. It was someone at the door. It wasn’t the muezzin singing but his landlady telling him he had a visitor.

  ‘Someone here to see you, Mr Sherley.’

  Nat heard Mrs Da Silva walk downstairs. He stood alone before the oak door. On the other side of which was the eldest Sherley brother, who was not gentle like Sir Anthony. He knocked. No reply. He knocked again. Silence. He lifted the latch, opened the door and entered Sir Thomas Sherley’s chambers.

  Thomas stood on a Persian rug in the middle of the room, holding a broken chair leg in each hand.

  ‘May I, Sir Thomas, present my letter of commendation, my testimonial from your brother?’

  ‘My brother?’

  ‘Sir Anthony.’

  ‘You were my brother Anthony’s servant?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Thomas laid the chair leg on the table beside his rapier. Nat watched him approach. He was much taller than Anthony, with immensely powerful shoulders, and led with his right leg when he walked. The rolling of his big shoulders and the slinging of his right leg forwards reminded Nat strongly of a lion’s slouching gait. And the bald patches in his hair and beard were gaps in the pelt of a mangy lion.

  ‘But I have just had a letter from my brother.’

  Thomas took the letter from Nat and walked over to his desk. He tilted the letter towards the lantern that burned before the dirty diamond-latticed windows.

  To whom it may concern,

  Hereby do I recommend for good and honest service in any task, Eli Elkin, a right faithful Christian, who, here in Venice as well as in Rome and Persia, has ever been a most loyal factor unto -

  His Excellency Sir Anthony Sherley, Knight.

  As Thomas read the letter he seemed unaware of the guttural noise, part growl, part hum, that he was making.

  ‘Alas,’ said Thomas, ‘I am too poor to offer you employment, Master Elkin, but here is my hand in fellowship.’

  Nat hesitated. Was it lawful for a commoner to shake a knight’s hand? But Thomas clasped his hand in both of his, and smiled a smile that showed he had lost a fang.

  ‘How did you know to find me here, Master Elkin?

  ‘I asked at the Sherley townhouse in Blackfriars, or what once was the Sherley townhouse, begging your pardon, Sir Thomas.’

  ‘Sit down. Sit, man, sit. I said fellowship, didn’t I? Well now, Master Elkin, if you were in Persia with my brother, then I have a treat for you. A little something from the east. We shall have jasmine tea!’

  He dropped two pink and silver pods into a can hanging from a pole over the grate. Soon a bright jasmine smell infiltrated the garret.

  ‘The testimonial was written in Italy,’ said Thomas, stirring the pods.

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘My brother has not been in Italy these last five years.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘How have you lived in the meantime?’

  ‘Piecemeal to speak true. Here and there, on the quays mostly.’

  Thomas froze. His humming growl ceased.

  ‘Which quays?’

  ‘Broken Wharf, Trigg Stairs, Galley Quay.’

  ‘The Levant Company has warehouses on Galley Quay, has it not?’

  Nat’s stomach turned over.

  ‘Yes, sir, I’ve been working there this week, hauling goods from Billingsgate, and hope to do so again.’

  ‘Hope not so!’ cried Sir Thomas, and then more quietly: ‘Hope not so. Have a better hope, I mean. Think of your soul, good Master Elkin.’

  ‘I seek better employment with you, Sir Thomas.’

  ‘Well in that case,’ said Thomas, ‘what information can you bring me from Galley Quay?’

  ‘Since losing their monopoly, the Levant Company dismisses men every day. They’ve had to give up their Billingsgate warehouse, sir.’

  ‘Have they now?’ His frame was shaken by a rapid succession of rasping hup, hup, hup’s. ‘That is good news!’

  ‘Good news, Sir Thomas? Many labourers will lose their livelihoods. These men all have families to feed, sir.’

  ‘The argument of footpads,’ replied Thomas.

  Sermons from a pirate, thought Nat. The ruined pirate set the steaming can of jasmine tea before them, a Sherley serving a Bramble. The precise way in which Thomas set out two tin goblets, and the way he poured the jasmine tea seemed to Nat to be the movements of a prisoner used to parcelling out his meagre ration of activity over the course of a whole day. One action at a time. There was anger, too, in the exactitude of his pouring. Where Anthony was choleric, irascible, busy, Thomas had a deep, still anger, which was much more ominous. They sat almost knee to knee on two wooden chairs in front of the broad oak desk. The furrows between his heavy eyebrows sharpened as Thomas frowned.

  ‘What is that noise?’ he snapped.

  For a moment, Nat thought that Thomas had somehow suddenly become aware of his own growling hum. The next moment he realised what noise he meant, and replied:

  ‘Oh, I have a pigeon in my breast. He won’t fly, so I carry him into Snow Hill where I live and release him. It is a lazy one, sir.’

  ‘A pigeon?’

  ‘In Isfahan and in Damascus they use them instead of riding post. A safe way to send letters, Sir Thomas.’

  ‘You send letters, do you?’

  A blunder. A grievous blunder. Nat tried to distract Thomas from what he had said by producing Parboyl’s brown and white domed head.

  ‘Here he is, sir.’

  Thomas ignored the bird and stared deep into Nat’s eyes.

  ‘Letters?’ he asked.

  ‘Would you like to hold him, Sir Thomas?’

  ‘What kind of letters?’

  ‘None as yet,’ replied Nat, putting Parboyl back inside his jerkin as he spoke, ‘but I hope that I can sell these intelligencing doves to merchants and sheriffs and those who need a discreet way to communicate.’

  ‘Merchants…? You mean the Levant Company?’

  ‘A man must live, Sir Thomas.’

  ‘By conniving in the capture and death of other men?’

  Nat’s heart turned over. Did Thomas know why he had been sent here? The throaty rasp grew louder, the head twitched, and then the pirate said:

  ‘Slaves. Slavery is how your Levant Company profits in Turkey. Christians kidnapped from their
beds in maritime villages all round the Mediterranean. Children, mothers, fathers. Christians, Arabs, Jews and Moors. Snatched from their beds and sold in every Turkish town. Man, woman or child, they stand on the block like animals at auction. Sold from Turk to Turk. Shipped from harbour-market to harbour-market in Levant Company ships and only in Levant Company ships. None but our fine English merchants stoop to handle this trade. None but Levant Company ships bounce down the coast with Christian slaves. Are you proud of your work for them?’

  Nat sat bolt upright as he recalled the timbers in the Mayflower’s hold. His eyes grew wide, as he said:

  ‘I do believe I saw the names of those poor captives scored above their manacles in the hold of one of the Levant Company ships.’

  ‘One? One? Ha!’ A hollow, parched bark. ‘Inspect the hold of every ship in their whole godforsaken fleet! The Royal Merchant, the Trinity Bear, the Samaritan, the Mayflower, the Gift Of God, the Jesus, the Christ! Not one, but all, man, all! That’s the Levant Company’s stock in trade!’

  ‘If our English merchants don’t do it,’ said Nat, ‘someone else will.’

  With extraordinary speed, Thomas’s arm slammed the table.

  ‘No-one else will! No-one!’ he shouted. ‘Venice refuses even to sell arms to the Turk. Do you know what happens if a Venetian sells even so much as one ball shot to the Turk? The Doge confiscates his ship, all the goods in its hold are forfeit, and the merchant himself is condemned to the galleys for a fixed time.’

  Again the muffled growl, the strangulated throaty hum, resumed in the back of Thomas’s throat, only now that he got into the story he tossed his head jerkily, and smoothed the bald spots in his hair and beard with the tips of his long fingers, one after another, as he went on:

  ‘The Levant Company sells the Sultan hundreds of barrels of gunpowder and munitions, fuses, lead, muskets, swords. The Levant Company of Fylpot Street and Galley Quay. Customer Hythe brings much slander to our nation.’

  ‘The French trade with the Turk, Sir Thomas. The Poles too.’

  ‘Truffles - that’s what the French sell. The Poles sell mink and buy horses. That’s your French and Polonian trade into Turkey! But the English, by Christ’s blood and tears, keep three shops of arms and munitions in Constantinople, and transport Christian slaves around the Ottoman Empire. Only the Levant Company, only the English do this. All the others - Poles, French, Venetians - refuse to abet the kidnapping of Christians. This is the Levant Company you hope to serve, Elkin.’

  Nat noticed how the more excited Thomas grew, the more he fiddled with a curious iron pendant that hung from a leather strap around his neck. In shape it was a crooked dogleg, an elongated letter Z with the lower limb bent outwards to point straight at Nat. Its screw-threaded tip showed it to be the missing part of an unknown mechanism, a clock winder, chuck key or crank handle perhaps. Just as Nat was wondering whether this might be a clue as to where the secret lists were hid, Thomas asked a question that made his heart skip a beat:

  ‘Do you know Nat Bramble?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Do you know Nat Bramble?’

  ‘Why, yes. He was of Sir Anthony’s and your brother Robert’s party, sir.’

  ‘As were you.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So you must know Bramble too.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, sir.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘We had different duties.’

  ‘But you journeyed together through all those countries. So why won’t you tell me about him?’

  ‘Well, I hope to speak no ill of any a Christian man, sir.’

  ‘Ha! Then you would speak ill if you did speak of him. That’s plain. I see through your diplomacy!’

  ‘Then I have failed in my Christian duty, Sir Thomas.’

  ‘Speak on and you serve a better one. Where did you see him last?’

  ‘That would be Venice. By which time he was Sir Anthony’s secretary, I believe.’

  ‘Have you seen Bramble on Galley Quay?’

  ‘I, sir? No.’

  ‘But you said you have been working there?’

  ‘I have, sir, not him.’

  ‘If you see Bramble, be sure to tell me, won’t you?’

  ‘I will, Sir Thomas.’

  Nat turned his head away and tried to focus on something that would calm him, but instead his gaze fell upon an object that made his head spin: a Baku lantern. Three brass flames embossed its reservoir bowl. A perfect replica of the lantern that Nat dropped down the oil well at Masjid-i Suleiman was now burning away on the top floor of the Brown Bull east of Aldgate! On the floor beside the desk, lay a straw-lined box holding a dozen more Baku lanterns. So these were the trinkets the Customer meant, these were the gewgaws Thomas sold as a pretext for meeting with Italian conspirators.

  ‘Bramble betrayed my brother, and sold his confidential letters to the Levant Company, who rewarded the villain with a sinecure. He is therefore daily complicit in the transporting of Christian slaves.’

  Sermons from a pirate again - and yet the slander stung enough to provoke Nat to want to sting him back.

  ‘What a cruel twist of fate that the Levant Company should have been saved by you of all people, Sir Thomas.’

  ‘By me?’

  ‘Is it not strange, sir? I myself was skinking at the supper when Sir Anthony reminded the Customer that it was you who saved the Levant Company.’

  ‘Destroyed, I rather think he said. Ha-ha! You misheard, Master Elkin, you misheard. The Customer’s spies have broken into these chambers and searched my papers often enough for fear of my intent to raze Galley Quay to the ground.’

  ‘Saved, he said, sir. I remember Customer Hythe agreed with him, and said that when King James petitioned the Great Turk to release you he lost the right to refuse to sign Muslim contracts into law.’

  ‘What are you saying, boy?’

  ‘His Majesty licensed the Levant Company and all its works only to save your neck.’

  Thomas stared deep into his eyes.

  ‘You are a clever one.’

  ‘I’m just telling you what I heard, sir.’

  ‘Can you read and write?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Nat felt Thomas’s fingers close around the back of his neck.

  ‘Were you my brother’s secretary in Venice?’

  ‘No, sir, that was Nat Bramble.’

  ‘Nat Bramble.’ He could see the blood vessels in Thomas’s stone-blue eyes as they searched his own.

  ‘Yes, Sir Thomas.’

  ‘Not Eli Elkin?’

  ‘Nat Bramble.’

  ‘How did you get home?’

  ‘On the Levant Company’s Mayflower, Sir Thomas.’ The fingers of Thomas’s other hand closed upon his throat.

  ‘Then you lie. For how could you afford the passage home, when my brother cut all his people loose, far from home, without a penny?’

  ‘Oh no, sir. Sir Anthony deposited money for our pay and passage home with an English merchant in Venice.’

  Thomas pulled Nat forwards by the neck. Nat’s chair tipped onto its two front legs. He braced an arm on the desk to keep the chair from tipping over entirely. What mistake had he made? What slip had let Thomas see through his imposture?

  ‘God forgive me!’ For the murder he was about to commit? ‘God forgive me, but I half-believed the city merchants’ slanders about my brother.’

  He let go of Nat, and jumped to his feet.

  Suddenly Thomas clutched his skull with both hands. He gave a sharp yell of pain as if he was suffering a brain aneurysm. He jackknifed so suddenly that it might have been Anthony with his stone. The next second he was rolling around on the threadbare Persian carpet, with Nat hopping clear of his long legs.

  ‘Can I help you, Sir Thomas? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Out! Get out! Out!’

  7

  In the Pool of London a herring ship was approaching Galley Quay on its way to Fresh Wharf. Eli Elkin sat astride the ship’s crosst
ree stirruping his boot heels in the top-rigging. He was trying to catch a glimpse of his mother’s parish church, Saint Katherine Coleman’s, but since he had been away so many new tall houses had been built along Seething Lane that he couldn’t even see its steeple.

  He was coming home penniless, after long years of service overseas. If it turned out his mother had died in his absence then he did not know how he would feed himself, or where he would lay his head. He should have been home years ago. Three long hard years it had taken him to get home, and all because that whoreson Bramble had ruined Sir Anthony Sherley, and then swindled Elkin out of his testimonial letter.

  One look at the Pool was enough to rob Elkin of any last hope of gaining a foothold in the city. Every barge had its bargemen, every crane its crew, every warehouse its hands. With bitter envy, he watched the lightermen unloading Portuguese, Spanish and Levant Company ships, the wherrymen ferrying their passengers to Horsleydown Stairs, and the shouting crane crews on Tower Wharf unloading grain for the Tower of London, the bargemen shooting the rapids under London Bridge at Gut Lock and Pedlar’s Lock. Three years earlier Elkin might have been able to find a foothold in London. Too late now.

  London Bridge was the very image of a city full to bursting. The only bridge across the Thames, its every square inch was put to use. All manner of extensions hung off the back of the bridge’s tall buildings, like so many travellers clinging to the sides of an overloaded coach. Too late for Elkin to hop on that coach. In the middle of the bridge, Nonsuch House was full of rich Dutchmen, Italians and Spaniards, he had heard. There was no habitation for an honest Englishman anywhere in this city. Perhaps there might have been three years ago, but not now.

  Sitting up on the crosstree, as the herring ship creaked on the flood tide through the Pool, Elkin found himself eye-level with the sail-lofts and taking-in doors of all the new warehouses that now lined the river. The topmast’s City of London flag flapped in his face, and he pushed it aside as the ship drew level with the flat roof of a warehouse on Galley Quay, where a young warehouseman was scattering red berries for some pigeons. The breeze rippled the flat roof’s standing puddles turning them into silver discs, and, in that moment, Elkin recognised the young warehouseman: Bramble.