The Trade Secret

by Robert Newman

  Let wrongdoers beware! The Lord God would always find out wickedness even when it hid upon rooftops. Sure, it was Providence that the first man Elkin should see upon his return was the very cur who made it so hard for him to get back home for all these years. There would be no escape from justice now for the renegade who denied Christ and worshipped Ali in the mosques, for the villain who had forced Elkin to work his passage home on more ships than he could remember, for the traitor who betrayed Sir Anthony to England’s enemies.

  As close now as if he were leaning out of a first floor window and Bramble were on the pavement opposite, Elkin would hardly need to raise his voice to make the cur jump out of his skin! He put his hand to his belt. His knife and his billhook were both with his blanket roll at the foot of the mast. God’s hooks! He cast about for some weapon near at hand with which to murder Bramble. His eye fell upon the wood and metal gantline block.

  Elkin was shaking so violently that he was hardly able to unfasten the gantline block from the rigging. He freed it and stroked the spur of iron that jutted from the block’s end. This deadly missile would kill him surer than a pistol ball. Elkin stood up on the crosstree. He wound his fist and forearm around the broad City of London flag to lash himself to the topmast. He leaned out from the topmast, swinging the wood and metal block in his free hand. He watched Bramble sit down on the roof’s low parapet with one of the pigeons on his lap. Yes, let him spend his last breath mumbling to a pigeon instead of shriving himself for Divine Mercy!

  ‘Jesus Christ, Our Lord God King on Highest, make my aim true!’ Elkin shut one eye, took aim at Bramble’s skull, and hurled the block with all his might.

  Pigeons scattered. A black tile cracked. Bramble cried out. Jumped up. Untouched.

  The herring ship pitched. Elkin clung with both arms to the mast. The flag wrapped itself around him. When Elkin fought free of his red and white cocoon, he was anguished to see Bramble still alive. The only consolation was his enemy’s confusion. Bramble was bewildered, and was looking up, down and all around.

  That the gantline block had missed his skull meant only one thing. The Lord God did not wish to grant Bramble a quick death. Instead, He wanted Elkin to tell the Sherley brothers where to find him. Elkin lifted his eyes to the heavens.

  ‘Hosannah to King Jesus, who has brought Thy servant Eli home, after so many years away, to make of him an instrument of Thine and the Sherleys’ Vengeance upon the traitor Nat Bramble!’

  8

  Come the Friday when he was supposed to present his findings about Sir Thomas Sherley’s conspiracy to Customer Hythe, Nat was down in the Beijderwellen’s cellar with Miep, beheading carrots at the shoulder and sliding them into damp sand to stop them sprouting.

  ‘Three o’clock I’m expected at Fylpot Street, but what’s the point of even going I’d like to know. I’ve nothing to tell, no intelligence to pass on. I might as well not go. In fact, I’ll stay here.’

  They knelt side by side on an old jute sack, working by beams of light cast by drill holes in the brickwork.

  ‘Tell him you visited Thomas Sherley in his chambers,’ replied Miep, slotting a headless carrot into wet sand, ‘but that when you went there you found him too suspicious, too cagey, to let slip any intelligence.’

  ‘You mean tell him I’ve failed at the only task he ever set me.’

  ‘Except this time when you see the Customer,’ she said, ‘he doesn’t catch you sitting in a puddle on the roof in dirty clothes. This time you dress like a secretary and take him a written report.’

  ‘No, no, if I just present him with a written report about nothing then he’ll think I’ve no more judgement than a Dutch girl.’

  She stuck her knife into the damp sand and blew on her fingers for warmth. Well, that’s shut her up at least, thought Nat. She who presumed to advise a man who’d been halfway round the world. Perhaps at last the sense was dawning on her that affairs in the world of men were a sight more complex than Miss Puppyfat could ever understand.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘but you’re not going to give him a report about nothing. You’re going to use your report as a clever way of reminding the Customer that you have more knowledge of the Mediterranean trade than a whole Turkish bath full of his Levant Company men. Your report will go, when Thomas says such and such I believe he is referring to the price of broadcloth in Aleppo, which as we all know tum te tum, tum te ta…’

  Nat shook his head at her. He gouged a manky bruise from the side of a carrot, and then wiped his hands on his rough suede breeches.

  ‘When I go to see the Customer, I’ll wear my Persian attire. That’s what’ll remind him of who I am, and of the position I once held as secretary to a knight. Aye, and my lucky heron doublet, plus a few, choice Italian garments too!’

  Miep was flabbergasted. He had done it again: flipped straight from being the hard-bitten, broken-spirited codger to this naive, headlong boy who believed the solution to all his problems lay in the dressing-up box. Gone straight from one foolish role to the other, ignoring every word of wise counsel along the way.

  ‘I’d love to see you in your finery, Nat,’ she said gently. ‘But for today, why not dress like a sober clerk of works.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand,’ he said. ‘If I dress like what I have been, not what I am, then the Customer will be ashamed at having let me languish without advancement, and will therefore -.’

  ‘Make you company jester.’

  He laughed. He was suddenly happy to be down in this cellar with Miep, burying carrots in sand, and in this happiness he was ready to bury the Sherley hatchet too.

  ‘Miep, I believe I should leave Thomas Sherley be.’

  She sat back on her heels, wiped her knife upon her knee, and turned towards him.

  ‘Then do,’ she said.

  ‘I will. Thomas, you see, he’s not like Anthony. He’s not subtle or cunning. Not really. He’s just a little cracked in the head from all those years of licking rain off the cell wall. Oh, he slanders the Levant Company, all right, but not half as much as the men on Galley Quay.’

  ‘Or in the Steelyard.’

  ‘A blunt knife is what Thomas Sherley is.’

  ‘A blunt knife is more dangerous than a sharp one. You are wise to let him alone.’

  ‘Oh, am I now?’

  ‘Succeed as a spy,’ she went on, unable or unwilling to hear the condescension, ‘and the Customer will never trust you as a confidential clerk or secretary. That would be an end of you with him.’

  ‘Well, I’ll meddle with Tom Sherley no more, even if it does put me out of favour with the Customer.’

  ‘Bravo, Nat. Bravo.’

  He looked at her black, sparkling eyes in her pale face. Light from the holes drilled in the brick made her white skin glow and the ends of her orange hair translucent.

  ‘Miep…’

  ‘Do your carrots,’ she said.

  They worked in silence aware of each other’s breathing and tiniest movements. When the work was done, the sand was packed with hidden carrots, and there was a new awkwardness between them.

  On his knees in the cellar, he watched her carry the bucket up the stairs, the frayed hem of her dress swaying against her bare calves.

  Was this love? It couldn’t be. It wasn’t grand enough. It was nothing like those soaring sonnets Darius had recited for Gol. It was nothing like Rumi’s Like This.

  That afternoon, Miep was halfway through building a cucumber frame, when Nat appeared in the garden dressed for his Fylpot Street interview. She was aghast to see him dressed like a storybook fool and to hear him talk in a stilted, stagey way too, like a Blackfriars chorister playing a foreign prince.

  ‘Miep, the story of my life is in these threads. My friend Darius gave me this sleeveless fleece jerkin. In Rome, the First Secretary of the Great Persian Embassy gave me these pink and purple shalwar kameez. Sir Anthony made me wear these blue and gold stockings to match the blue and gold mooring posts of his Venetian palazzo. He want
ed his retinue to look the part. Well, do I?’

  She was so ashamed for him that she felt herself blush to the roots of her hair. The tips of her ears tingled with shame. She wanted to shout,

  ‘You look like a fool in your Persian motley! As though the Saracen has climbed down from the pub sign to mince along the street!’

  Even his English doublet looked crazy because no-one had worn that bumfreezer style since the old Queen’s reign. Of course, he decided not to wear his one non-ridiculous garment, that handsome black coat, and laid it on top of the rabbit hutch.

  ‘Perhaps wear that black coat on top,’ she said.

  ‘Why hide my light under a bushel?’

  ‘Just for sobriety’s sake, a little black.’

  ‘And turn up stewed and reeking? Fie on it!’ There was no talking to him in this mood, and so she gave up.

  For his part, Nat felt he was squaring the circle. His life was a scattering no more. Everything was coming together! When he tossed Parboyl, he flew like an arrow for Galley Quay. There were good omens everywhere! He looked off heroically in the direction of Newgate and the City of London, and was crushed to see Parboyl flying back to him.

  ‘Dvifje! Lief dvif!’ exclaimed Miep, irritatingly, clapping her hands together.

  ‘That stringy speckled runt,’ said Nat, ‘hasn’t the first idea about being a homing pigeon. He’s supposed to fly home. Home to the dovecot I built him on Galley Quay. Not round the corner and back to where he started from.’ He snatched Parboyl from the rabbit hutch roof and stuffed him into his doublet. He’d launch him in the City.

  Nat set off for Fylpot Street, rehearsing what to say to the Customer, but soon the stares directed at his outlandish clothes made it impossible for him think of anything at all. Miep was right! He should have dressed as the sober secretary. Should have worn that big black coat he got from Uruch. One look at this getup and the Customer would never offer him a position anyway. He was a public fool in his renegade motley. Perhaps there was still time to go back and change? No, he was more than halfway there now, just coming into the City at Bishopsgate, its turret a spray of severed heads. Each City gate displayed severed heads on pikestaffs to supplement the red dagger on the wall. Walking through Bishopsgate’s echoey gatehouse, Nat heard a Qizilbash captain say, ‘A warning to thieves!’ As he emerged onto Chamomile Street, he saw a sight which scared him every bit as much as those red-cloaked Qizilbash once did: an apprentice gang a dozen strong.

  The apprentices were playing a grisly game of hobbyhorse with a severed head, which had toppled, complete with pikestaff, from the Bishopsgate. One apprentice - big for a jockey - rode the hobbyhorse up and down, galloping towards passers by to make them scream and run away.

  Nat hurried past, hugging the walls. Even before he turned round he knew the shouts at his back were directed at him.

  ‘What thing is that? Hoy! Stranger! Stranger, hoy!’

  ‘How dare you come by here?’

  ‘Make him kiss the skull! Make him kiss the skull!’

  ‘Ride him down!’

  The jockey ran ahead of the mob. Holding the hobbyhorse in one hand, he spun Nat round with the other and grabbed his lapel.

  ‘Kiss the skull! Tongues!’

  It was a squashed leather face with long black eyelashes on the eyelids and the jaw swinging free. The dead head butted Nat hard in the mouth. A cheer went up from the mob that came running. Nat struggled but couldn’t get free of the hand grasping his jerkin.

  Jockey smashed the skull against his ear. The world went white. Blood trickled down the side of his neck. The hand on his lapel now seemed to him the most malevolent object in the world. He couldn’t shift it. This hand would be the death of him. The other apprentices were only a few strides away.

  ‘Kiss the skull!’

  With both hands Nat took hold of the dead man’s ears, plucked the severed head from the pikestaff, and piledrived the skull onto the jockey’s own head. As they cracked together, one of two skulls made a sound like a smashed marrow. The jockey collapsed into the filth of Chamomile Street.

  An apprentice club swung at his head. Nat ducked and felt the air raked above him. He turned and sprinted down Bishopsgate. Behind his back he heard the apprentices roaring,

  ‘Clubs! Clubs!’

  He stumbled round the corner into St Ellen’s path, skidded and scrambled down an alley and vaulted into a kitchen garden. He stamped through leek rows, past garlic heads and runner bean poles. He tried to hurdle the kitchen garden’s far wall, but his muddy shoe, heavy with soil, slipped on broken glass cemented into the brick, and he landed on his ribcage on the other side of the wall. He heard the apprentices come crashing through the beanpoles.

  He stood up, wheezing and winded. He ran down Bury Street, snuck into a doorway and flattened his back against the door, pressing his throbbing forearms against its wood. Parboyl fidgeted at his breast, making the hooks of his doublet minutely squeak and creak. The next moment, there came a deafening, skittle alley clatter of wooden clubs in Bury Street. For sheer terror his legs seemed to give way like ninepins as the boys drew near.

  He sucked down a deep draught of lung-scorching air and burst from the doorway into Bury Street. A great halloo rose up from the apprentice boys. Nat heard their feet pounding the street behind him, drawing ever nearer to his heels. He ran into the Aldgate crowds. Dodging and weaving through carts and barrows, jinking between carmen, carters and housewives, he escaped the mob, but was so scared that he didn’t stop running until Threadneedle Street, where he heard the bells strike the quarter hour. A quarter past three. He was late! He’d missed his Fylpot Street appointment with the Customer. God damn those boys to hell.

  Halfway down Threadneedle Street, Nat stopped to get his breath back. Next to him on the narrow cobbled pavement was a signwriter’s ladder. At the top of the ladder, the signwriter was applying the finishing touches to a glossy wooden tabard showing three yellow needles on a black background. Three brass flames on a lantern bowl. As the signwriter’s maulstick rocked the sign to and fro, this fresh black and yellow gloss paint winked and the yellow needles flickered like flames that gave no heat.

  Suddenly Nat knew how Thomas Sherley smuggled stolen trade secrets out of the country. His resolution to leave the ruined pirate alone perished like paper in flame.

  Before the clocks struck the next quarter he was outside the Brown Bull.

  9

  Mrs Da Silva, mistress of the Brown Bull, remembered Nat’s face. ‘Sir Thomas is most desirous of seeing you,’ she said. ‘Come, let us see our garret knight.’

  Nat followed her up several flights of scuffed wooden stairs. Sir Thomas was it now? He must be paying his rent on time. Perhaps his ship had come in. Perhaps all the wealth that once flowed to the Levant Company now flowed to him instead.

  ‘Sir Thomas and his man are more out than in these days.’

  A manservant too. Mrs Da Silva knocked at the door to Sir Thomas Sherley’s garret chambers. No reply. She opened the oak door and called in to the outer room:

  ‘Sir Thomas…?’ She closed the door. ‘Well, he shan’t be long,’ she said, ‘his lamp’s still burning.’

  ‘May I wait for him here, ma’am?’ She looked him up and down. ‘My clothes are muddy, ma’am, only because I was chased by ruffians.’

  ‘I’m not surprised you were chased,’ she retorted. ‘You must learn to do as my husband did when he first came over. A Portugal man, but you’d never have known it to look at the clothes on him. Mr Da Silva valued his marriage more than mass and went to proper protestant church. You should worship right too.’

  ‘I do, ma’am.’

  ‘You should dress more like the English and all. You should go to their churches and leave your mosques behind. You may wait there for Sir Thomas.’ She pointed to a small hard chair and went back downstairs.

  Nat crept along the landing. He lifted the latch, pushed open the door and entered the empty chambers. He crossed the creaking b
lack oak floorboards and the threadbare Persian rug to the desk, where a lantern was lit despite the daylight coming through the grimy windows.

  The lantern cast a wan amber over Sir Thomas’s correspondence, his reckonings, chits and bills. Nat had eyes only for the lantern itself with its embossed Baku symbol: three brass flames that looked like moneybags.

  The lantern held a slender reed of flame on a thin white wick clamped, top and bottom, by a steel caliper. He lifted a little catch and its half-compass pane swung open. The naked flame flickered blue and gold.

  This was the mysterious Baku fire that Darius had told him about when they were in the goatherd’s shack on the Zagros Mountains. A fire that lit a room but did not burn paper.

  He tried to blow it out, but the flame only wobbled. He placed the snuff cap on top to extinguish the flame, but when he took it off again the flame still burned. He turned the lantern round. There was a socket on the back of the lantern to raise or quench the flame, but it was missing its crank handle. What went into the socket must be that crooked dogleg of a screw-bit which Thomas wore around his neck.

  ‘One of Cecil’s spies,’ the Customer told him, ‘lit one and was blown up as if by a grenade.’ An explosive charge was hidden inside the lantern. Fiddle with the socket without that crank handle and the lantern would explode in his face and leave him looking like Gol’s father.

  His next thought was simply to snatch the lantern, peg downstairs and run to Fylpot Street. There was a danger to this course, however. Mrs Da Silva would know he stole the lantern. If his hunch was wrong, if the lantern held no lists, Thomas would call for his arrest, the Customer would disown him for a thief, and Nat’s head would be stuck on a pole on Bishopsgate. One more dead lantern-thief on the gate. Another hobbyhorse for the apprentices to ride.