A Clash of Spheres

by P. F. Chisholm

  He was tired of working for Spynie in any case since the man was often stingy and ungrateful. He didn’t need the ex-minion any more, since he was now working directly for his Catholic Majesty, and had two bills of exchange from the King of Spain, one of which he had turned into a tidy sum of money at the Steelyard, where they gave him a better rate. He had got rid of Dixon as well, since the man was stupid as well as aggressive.

  Spynie came back from the hunt early and found him and begged him to do something about the man Carey’s men-at-arms had just captured. Hepburn was tempted to tell Spynie to do it himself, but didn’t on the grounds that information was like gold and you didn’t give it away. Instead he looked through the maze of old abbey storerooms, disturbed a clerk at a standing desk who said Hughie would most likely be in Sir Robert Carey’s rooms working on his clothes. So he went to find Hughie Tyndale who was sitting crosslegged on a table in the old infirmary, sewing away with a will on Carey’s new Court suit. Hughie lifted his head and smiled as Hepburn came in.

  “Och,” he said, “it’s nice tae see ye again, sir, though I’ve not killt Carey yet…”

  “No, that’s fine,” Hepburn answered, “I don’t want you to kill him at the minute, I’ve got another job for you.”

  “What’s that, sir? Will I kill anybody else for ye?”

  “Yes,” said Hepburn and saw Hughie grin and smack his lips. “I need something tidied up.”

  They talked for a while about how best to do it and after a while, Hughie came back from a poke around and said he’d found the locked storeroom but didn’t have the key. He picked up a leather bag from the corner as he went. Hepburn took a quiet look around the place, found no key, but had some skeleton keys he had found useful in the past. Hughie was curious and interested and so they both went to the storeroom. Hepburn banged on the door, heard a doleful, “Yes, sir.”

  “We’ve come fra Lord Spynie to help you,” said Hughie, grinning.

  “Good,” said the man in relief.

  Hepburn went through a few of the keys, found one that worked. Hughie Tyndale unlaced his sleeves and rolled his shirtsleeves up, opened his bag, put on a voluminous blue butcher’s apron over his clothes, went in with his favourite thin wire with wooden handles. There was a brief struggle and a glottal sound and then Hughie came out again, showing thumbs up. Hepburn took a glance and saw the man’s head almost off and blood everywhere, didn’t see the need to check any further, and locked the place up again. Hughie carefully took his butcher’s apron off and wiped his garotte with a clean corner. Then he left the apron stuffed into a hole in the wall they passed where there was an airbrick. There was not a speck of blood on Hughie’s clothes anywhere, which was quite impressive and so Hepburn paid him and Hughie put his wire back in his pocket and sauntered off whistling tunelessly, to the tiny suburb around the northern corner of the Edinburgh walls which was apparently where the tarts could be found.

  And then Hepburn went to the main hall of Holyrood House, slipped in at the back and drank some wine, watching as some of the servants rolled around completely drunk, just like the King of an evening, and some of the henchmen got in a dagger-stabbing game that they were all very good at, stabbing between their fingers faster and faster. Idiots.

  Most of the Court was off hunting with the King, but the Queen didn’t hunt. And killing excited him, made him feel the power of the Demiurge flowing through him, made him want a woman.

  He went into the gardens where Marguerite often walked in the afternoons. Usually they met late at night when everybody was asleep, but he needed her now. So he walked in the gardens, taking a tiny risk, passed Marguerite as she walked with some of the Queen’s women, laughing and giggling, paused to wink at her once and then passed on, pretending not to know her.

  Twenty minutes later she was trotting through the storerooms right at the back of the palace, where there were stables for visitors filled with ugly hobbies and a couple of good horses. Hepburn had spent the time waiting for her in checking his precious leaden tanks for leaks and found nothing, which relieved a worry. When he heard Marguerite’s quick footsteps, he hid behind a door, then stepped out and caught her and she squeaked once, then melted into him and said things to him in Flemish which made him more excited.

  He half-carried her into the unimportant looking storeroom where he had put the leaden tanks and the lead half globes when he had brought them a few weeks before. Then he unlaced himself with suddenly clumsy fingers, lifted her skirts and impaled her like a fish on a hook, set her back against the wall whilst she wrapped her stockinged legs around his kidneys and bucked and threshed until he bit her again and she cried out behind his careful hand over her mouth.

  Hepburn and Marguerite stood like that for a few minutes while Hepburn got his breath back and Marguerite felt the glorious happiness washing through her that cleaned away Antwerp and made every risk worthwhile. Then Hepburn set her down and kissed her again with that smile of his that she loved, that said he was cleverer than anybody.

  They were too experienced to speak. Hepburn picked up his hat which had fallen off in the heat of the moment, laced himself again, gave her one more kiss and walked out of the storeroom. Marguerite counted conscientiously to one hundred, made sure that she was tidy and had no telltale smears on her, and also walked away.

  Behind them both, high up in the rafters and lying full length along one of the main beams was Young Hutchin, in a state of some excitement himself. He had to wait and deal with it before he could climb down from the place he had scrambled into when he had heard Hepburn coming. He jumped down onto one of the lead tanks which had given him a useful leg up to the rafters, straightened his clothes and went out, looking extremely smug. She was a pretty one, the blond woman, a bit old maybe, but juicy and she was wearing pretty clothes of brocade and velvet which meant she was important. He had been impressed with the whole thing. Could he hold a woman up like that and swive her? Not yet maybe, but he would one day. He let his imagination work on this for a while and had to visit the jakes on the way. God, the courtiers were a randy bunch—Carey had been at the women too, the Italian lady, when he had been at Court in Dumfries. One day, Young Hutchin promised himself, he would do it too and sooner rather than later because he honestly thought he might explode if he didn’t.

  ***

  Anricks was still standing at his clerk’s desk a couple of hours later with papers spread out in front of him. He had carefully unpicked the sewing on his packet from Poppy Burn, and then tried a number of different decoding methods on the carefully ciphered pieces of paper. Anricks still wasn’t sure whether the text came from Poppy herself or somebody else but couldn’t think who that somebody else could be or how they could meet with a woman who had taken her chamber. He had remembered to ask Roger Widdrington about Poppy’s gossips and found she had no gossips in Widdrington and had only the girls in the house to look after her. No man had come near her since Sir Henry Widdrington had left.

  So the text came from Poppy. Who had taught her to cipher and why? There was a dull itching of frustration under his breastbone because so far her cipher had utterly defeated him.

  With the previous packets he had copied out the whole ciphered text very carefully and then delivered them where Poppy asked, sending the copy south to London to try if Sir Robert Cecil or Mr Phelippes could get any more from them than he could. As far as he knew, they hadn’t.

  He sat back and stretched his fingers. What was the index book? He shut his eyes and tried to imagine the shelves of books in Minister Burn’s study, but no, that was the wrong place to look. Poppy Burn would need the book to hand, would need it now, in fact. He thought back to her chamber at Widdrington, thought of the book in her hand…No, that had been a book of sermons and quite new. The book she used would be older and well-worn…There was something. He pictured the little table with the pile of books, the one book lying off to the side, open…What was the fron
tispiece? A man with a bush over his shoulder…No, it was a schoolmaster holding a birch which was quite funny because Ascham argued eloquently that to get the best out of the pupils, the schoolmaster should not birch his charges too often.

  His heart was thumping with excitement as he delved into his pack and found the book. Ascham’s The Schoolmaster. A different copy and he hadn’t read it yet, but he thought it was the same edition since it had the same picture at the front. His hands shaking slightly, he settled down to try what that would do.

  Half an hour later he paced around the room stretching his fingers. He was sure it was the right one, even though it still didn’t make sense because it didn’t make sense in a way that wasn’t random letters, there were repeated words—“und” for instance. She had used the book to give letters, not just words, page number, paragraph, word then the individual letters. Sometimes she used the same sequence of numbers for the same word which was bad practice but understandable if you were in a hurry.

  At the end of the letter where you usually found the words that gave you your start was no name but a short word “liebe.” He knew Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese but no Allemayne and that was what he suspected the letter was in. Deutsch. Or perhaps a Scandinavian language since the Queen was Danish. Why Allemayne? He didn’t speak it even badly which now annoyed him. He scowled at his careful copying, then sighed and packed up all the sheets of paper, put them back into the packet and sewed it up again with the same thread in the same holes, reattaching the seals with a knife heated in a candle. He would take it to the place Poppy had said, the Maker’s Mark, Edinburgh, and see if he could catch a glimpse of the man who picked it up. He hadn’t yet, because the man didn’t come at a regular time.

  Now he had to find someone who could translate the Deutsch for him, someone he could trust. That would have been simple in London or Bristol, but were there Deutschers in Scotland? And how was it Poppy Burn came to be using Deutsch? Surely the letter came from someone else? On one point he felt he could relax—most Allemaynes were Lutherans so, apart from the question of why packets of ciphered letters were going to and from the Scots Court at all, surely there wouldn’t be anything too deadly in it?

  So when Carey came back from his day’s hunting, muddy and carrying his half-bent hat rather than wearing it, Anricks was eager to tell him the whole tale of the secret packets.

  Carey was looking tired and sad, which was odd after a day spent hunting and had eaten in hall with the King so Anricks sent Hughie Tyndale down to the buttery to get him some ale and bread. Hughie was by contrast very happy and smelled of drink, but did the errand willingly enough.

  “Yes,” said Carey as Anricks cut the bread, said grace and thanks to the Almighty for it, and tucked into a slice of liver sausage he hoped wasn’t pork and some pale winter butter. He didn’t think the liver was pork, it was too strong flavoured, more venison. “Spynie had exactly the attempt at me you predicted, but two traps, a rope at head height for me and two wires at chest height for the horse who had done Spynie no harm that I can think of.”

  Anricks tutted. “But you survived?”

  Carey smiled faintly. “Clearly. The horse didn’t, though. Broke his damned leg.”

  “Oh.” Was that why Carey was subdued? Remarkable.

  Then Carey brightened. “Oh, but Bangtail and Red Sandy were there as you arranged and caught one of the men who pulled the wires tight at the right time. Shall we go and interrogate him?”

  They went down to the storeroom as soon as Anricks had finished, Carey produced a key and flourished it open, marched in and stopped immediately. His boots were sticky soled with blood and there was a strong stench of shit.

  Anricks brought a candle and examined the corpse carefully. He had been garrotted and there had not been a fight because his hands were still roped together.

  “Damn it,” said Carey, “Damn it to hell.”

  “The door was locked…”

  Carey examined it and tried a couple of other keys in the lock. Two worked. “It’s the old abbey, I suspect that the monks weren’t too particular about locks except for food, drink, and money. Anybody could have come in and done it.”

  They locked up the corpse again and left him there until they could decide what to do about him since there was no way of finding out who had garrotted him. Clearly Lord Spynie was the man who had given the order, but there was no way of proving it and Carey didn’t want to take the blame. There was always the Lough in the north of the city, if necessary.

  It was already getting dark but the gates to the city weren’t shut yet, since it was close to Christmas and, more importantly, New Year, when everyone always gave presents. Carey was down in the dumps again, so they took a walk through the crowds and after Anricks had checked carefully for followers, he broke the matter of the Deutsch letter with Carey. Carey listened carefully, his head cocked, his old hat pulled down on his head and the wounded hat in a sack in case they could find a milliner who could cure it. The torches on the walls and shops along the main street leading up to the castle flared and caught in the wind and the shop windows were bright with lanterns.

  Anricks didn’t say where the letter had come from and Carey didn’t ask, which showed as nothing else did that Walsingham had had the training of him. Anricks finished by saying he was not now so concerned, since most Allemaynes were Lutherans after all.

  “Not all of them,” said Carey, surprised. “The southern Allemaynes are Catholic and under King Philip’s cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor.”

  Anricks was embarrassed. “I should have remembered that,” he admitted, “although it’s out of my field. So we are back at the beginning. Do you speak any Deutsch?”

  “No, only French. But there must be some Hansa merchants here. Shall I take your copy of the letter for you, Mr Anricks, so you can work on your dissertation?”

  Anricks coloured. He had not worked on it since Carey had told him not to use mathematics. All the fun had gone out of the project now—how could he say anything to the purpose without using mathematics, the language of the angels?

  Carey smiled at him and wagged a finger. “Mr Anricks, if you want the King to adopt you as his pet philosopher, then you can be eccentric, your hair can stand on end…”

  “I wish I had that much hair.”

  “You can quote Greek and Latin to your heart’s content but…”

  “Yes, I know…”

  “Translate it into Scotch. I can help with that, my Scotch is reasonable but you must write it first.”

  Andricks sighed. “But…”

  “Find a way. Or no pet philosopher, you. Ah, this is a good place.”

  They were in the milliner’s lane, in front of a shop with glorious highcrowned beaver hats lined up on its shelves, the torches at the front flaring backwards from the wind and the lanterns making ominous shadows.

  Carey dived into the shop, having to duck his head once he was inside. Anricks waited outside, anxiously thinking of beginnings for his dissertation, watching the little puppet play in the shop. Carey brought the wounded hat out of the sack, the hatter took it sadly in his hands, turned it round, examined the ropeburn mark across the front and slowly shook his head. Carey looked unhappy and came out.

  “He says it can’t be mended,” Carey said, and stood there with the hat in his hands, turning it.

  “I never thought it could.”

  “Well, but…” And Carey fell silent and looked at the ground.

  Suddenly Anricks understood. “You need a new one, don’t you?”

  Carey smiled the smile of a boy who has dropped his sweetmeat in the mud and is now offered the possibility of a new one by his nurse. “Yes, I do, Mr Anricks, but what with the new Court suit…”

  Anricks was married to a wonderful woman of character who combined intelligent economy with judicious spending on important items. He rarely had to
think about money at all, except when he bought another large load of books, or occasionally an entire library that had been sitting in someone’s barn since it was robbed from a monastery. And Rebecca was usually good-humoured about those purchases. Books were sacred to her too, as to all Jews. As he had said to Cecil, he had plenty of money, although he thought Carey could beggar him in a year. Never mind, he thought, it’s an investment.

  “I don’t see how you can wear Court duds and not get the right hat to go with it,” he said, reverting to the London speech of his childhood. Together they went back into the hatshop.

  ***

  Janet was counting bushels of grain again while spinning with a dropspindle. She found it soothing, the spread and twist of the oily wool between her fingers, the twirl of the spindle as it went down, pulling and twisting the fibres behind it, and then winding up the wool onto the spindle and repeat. It was one of those handcrafts, like knitting, that you could do with your hands without troubling your mind, once you got the way of it. But she was still worried. She couldn’t make the bushels add up to any more than they were, which was not enough. Was it poor old Shilling’s death sentence?

  At least the weather wasn’t as wet and muddy as it had been. It had turned cold in the last few days and there had been a frost the night before which meant they could start harvesting the Brussels sprouts, strange new-fangled things they were but they were tasty and a welcome change from cabbage. She left the grain in its wickerlined pits and went out of the store shed and up the ladder to the barnekin wall, where she could walk all along the creaking fighting platform with her thick shawl over her shoulders, her cap pinned on tight against the wind, and think.

  She tried not to think of Henry who was off in Edinburgh with the Courtier. She couldn’t help thinking of him and his soulsickness but really she needed to work out what to do about the Widow Ridley who had come to Gilsland the night before with her grandson and was sleeping in Janet’s trucklebed.