by Ann Swinfen
‘Tatars?’ I said. ‘Is this some kind of ritual punishment?’
Pyotr gaped at me, then gave a strained smile. ‘The Tatars are being baptised into the Christian faith. To undergo the ceremony at the blessing of the Moskva is the most reverent and auspicious time to choose for baptism.’
I could not find the words to answer him. I would never understand these people.
As when we had been at Uglich, I was uncertain of the protocol here. I consulted Austin Foulkes several days after the blessing ceremony.
‘A request was sent for an English physician,’ I said, ‘with some expertise in the treatment of children. That was partly the reason I was chosen for this mission. Or at any rate that was used as an excuse, as cover for the real reason I was sent here. But I must pursue the main reason for my coming here. I do not know what I am supposed to do about the child patient at Court. I cannot simply walk into the Kremlin. Nor can I kick my heels here much longer. I am anxious to discover what has happened to Gregory Rocksley and return with you on board this summer’s fleet. My enquiries here have proved fruitless. I must move on. What am I to do?’
‘I am afraid you must await summons from the Court,’ he said. ‘And you will not be granted permission to leave Moscow until you have treated the child, if your attendance is still required. Much of our time in this country is spent waiting about for the wheels of officialdom to grind slowly on their way.’
‘You still think my skills are required?’
‘Christopher Holme mentioned to one of the Court officials that you had arrived in Moscow, accompanying him from St Nicholas. Word will have been passed along the chain of officials to whomsoever it concerns. Do you know who the child is?’
I shook my head. ‘One time I was told a child of the Court, at another, a child of the royal family. But I know now that the only child of the royal family is the Tsarevich. Originally I expected to find him in Moscow also, not in Uglich.’
‘A child of the royal family?’ He rubbed his head. ‘I wonder. The daughter of Boris Godunov might be described thus. The Tsar is, after all, her uncle by marriage. The little girl Xenia Borisovna Godunova. You saw her at the blessing of the Moskva.’
‘The only child the Patriarch sprinkled with the river water?’
‘With the holy river water.’ He smiled. ‘Aye, that is the child. She is lovely, is she not?’
‘Very.’ Like the mother of her soi disant cousin Dmitri, I thought. There were some true beauties in this ravaged and violent family. Dmitri himself had a fragile beauty. My spirits rose a little. If it was Xenia I was to physic, there should be no problem in passing to her the package entrusted to me.
‘In the meantime,’ he said, ‘one of my stipendiaries who has been on a trading mission to Nizhnii Novgorod arrived back late last night. Alexander Wingrave. He travels regularly with goods to that town, and while Gregory Rocksley was here last year they became quite friendly. I believe they even travelled part of the way south together, for a day or two, when Rocksley set out for Astrakhan. I think if you are to learn anything useful while you are here, it will be from Wingrave.’
Alexander Wingrave slept late, exhausted, it seemed from his journey, after a successful mission to this town whose name I had never heard before. I was impatient to speak to him, but of course he knew nothing of that. When he finally rose he was occupied with Austin Foulkes and Christopher Holme, going through the paperwork and checking the goods he had brought back with him – fine goods from the orient, it appeared, which had come through Persia during a rare period of settled peace between the constant flare ups of war in the southeast. Silks, spices, and gems, all goods of high value, which occupied little space, and so were doubly welcome.
The three of them emerged just in time for our midday dinner looking pleased with their accounting, so I was forced to wait in increasing impatience until the meal was finished. We had been introduced briefly at its start, but I judged from his manner that Wingrave had not been told of my interest in finding Rocksley.
‘May I have a word with you, Master Wingrave?’ I said, as we rose from the table. I felt we had been sitting over the remnants of the meal far too long. ‘In private?’
He raised his eyebrows, looking a little put out. A man well into his thirties, he seemed somewhat old to be a stipendiary, but I suspected, from the way he had talked up the success of his trading trip, that he was hoping for promotion to agent soon.
Christopher Holme came to my support.
‘Dr Alvarez is here not only in his capacity as a physician,’ he explained. ‘He has been sent by the governor himself to discover what happened to Gregory Rocksley.’
I saw the flash of surprise in Wingrave’s eyes. He must be wondering why a young physician should be considered suitable for such a mission. I was accustomed to this reaction from men of his type – self assured, perhaps a little too pleased with their own superiority over others.
‘Dr Alvarez also worked for the late Sir Francis Walsingham,’ Christopher continued. I realised he had made the same assessment of the man Wingrave as I had. ‘He has served on delicate missions not only in England but in the Low Countries and Portugal. It was at the Twelfth Night Revels in Whitehall Palace last year that he personally thwarted an attempt to assassinate the Queen. You would do well not to underestimate him.’
Wingrave flushed, and had the grace to look embarrassed. For myself, I was taken aback. I had never spoken to Christopher of the events at Whitehall. Perhaps he had been told more about me than I realised.
‘Use the office,’ Austin Foulkes said. ‘We have finished with your documents for now, Wingrave.’
We walked back to the small office together. It was tucked between two of the larger rooms, which were used when goods like bolts of fine English cloth would be spread out to be inspected by Muscovy merchants wishing to purchase. There was a small fireplace in the office, of English design, with a comfortable fire burning in it, and the walls were covered with shelves and pigeonholes for account books – dozens of them – and scrolls containing sales and purchase documents, inventories of goods, trading agreements with local merchants, and all the other clutter which accumulates in a large mercantile concern.
Wingrave and I pulled up chairs to the fire.
‘What is it you want to know?’ he said.
‘Everything you can tell me about Gregory Rocksley when he was here. Particularly anything he may have said when he returned unexpectedly from Narva, why he decided to go south to Astrakhan, what he spoke of when you travelled together. You may have been the last person to see him alive.’
He looked uncomfortable at this stark assessment.
‘Hardly, I think. His interpreter was still with him.’
‘His interpreter has also disappeared. Incidentally, no one has ever mentioned his name to me.’
‘Ivan Petrovich . . . I can’t recall his surname. John, son of Peter. That’s the name of every second man in Muscovy.’
His tone was patronising, but it would be a waste of time and this single opportunity if I allowed my annoyance to show.
‘Master Foulkes said you became quite friendly with Rocksley. Did he tell you why he was here?’
‘Oh, I soon guessed that. He was posing as a stipendiary sent from London, and certainly he was a competent accountant, but I was not taken in.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘New stipendiaries do not travel about the country from one town to another, or go off into disputed lands, on their own except for an interpreter, without goods to buy or sell. A new stipendiary is allocated to one Company house, under one agent, until he has been trained up. Besides, he was too old, well past thirty.’
I knew that Rocksley was thirty five. It had not occurred to me that his age might make people suspicious of him.
‘What do you suppose he was doing here, then?’
‘What do men sent out from London usually do? Examine the books, look for fraud or private dealing on the part of some
employee.’
‘I was told, before I left London, that the shareholders turn a blind eye to petty trading. Do you suppose there might have been major fraud?’
He shook his head. ‘Only by Jerome Horsey. He even tries to cheat the Tsar, but Godunov is after him. Everyone knows about Horsey.’
‘So you thought he was here to investigate some other instance of fraud?’
‘That was what I thought when he first arrived in Moscow. He stayed for some weeks and we got to know each other. Pleasant enough fellow, though a little dull. A little nondescript.’
He smoothed down his own doublet, which was made of plum coloured velvet with mustard satin slashings. I smiled inwardly. Gregory Rocksley would be like Nick Berden, one of Walsingham’s agents of the same age and experience, a man I knew well. He would certainly be practised in blending with the background, never drawing attention to himself, the sort of man you would forget was near you in an inn parlour or a busy street.
‘That was what you thought when he first arrived,’ I prompted. ‘But afterwards?’
‘Well, for one thing, there was his trip to Narva. I mean, the town fell to Sweden nine or ten years ago, and Muscovy wants it back. War is always brewing along those borderlands, and at that moment it was about the break out. We all knew that. He had no business going there.’
I knew that a visit to Narva was exactly Rocksley’s business. It was unfortunate that he was overtaken by other events. I was unsure whether he had returned from Narva before or after full scale war had overwhelmed the area, so I asked Wingrave.
‘He was back in Moscow just in time, before the fighting started, but his whole manner had changed. I was quite curious about it.’
This man’s manner was so indolent, I wondered what it would take to really rouse him to action.
‘In what way had his manner changed? When he came back from Narva?’
He frowned, as though he had never tried to put it into words before. ‘He was preoccupied. He was always reticent, but now he seemed . . . worried. Perhaps almost fearful. When he was here in Moscow before, that first visit, he talked about going north after his trip to Narva, to rejoin the fleet at St Nicholas and return to London. That was another thing that marked him out as not being a genuine stipendiary, who would have been here for at least three years.’ He looked pleased with himself for working this out. ‘We had not expected him to return to Moscow.’
‘Did he say anything to you, or to Master Foulkes, to indicate why he was worried?’
‘Master Foulkes was not here at the time. It is part of the chief agent’s duties to make the rounds of the other Company houses every few months. Keep the provincial centres on their toes,’ he added, with the superior air of the man at the centre of affairs.
It was the kind of remark you heard in London, about the remoter counties of England. It was proving tedious trying to extract information from this fellow. I did not think he was being deliberately obstructive, he simply did not care very much, and was not a very observant witness.
‘So,’ I said, hoping that by summing up I might focus his mind. ‘Rocksley had travelled around the Company houses, looking at the accounts and asking questions. You thought he was not a normal stipendiary, but someone sent by the London office to investigate fraud. Such a person was not unknown, and you accepted that. Then, inexplicably, he went off to Narva, which is no longer in Russian hands and no longer has a Company house. He returned hastily and seemed worried, even afraid. You say Master Foulkes was not here. You did not say whether he confided in you.’
I knew I was becoming somewhat sharp with him, but I felt that at last I might be hearing a faint echo of what might have happened to Rocksley.
‘I would not say he confided,’ he admitted. ‘But he said he did not want anyone in the Muscovy government to know that he was with us here. He never went out, but mostly stayed in his room, writing despatches.’
Ah, so he had written despatches.
‘And?’ I prompted.
‘He did say one odd thing. He said that we should not trust too much to the belief that Godunov had made his peace with England. Godunov had “other irons in the fire”, in his words. Rocksley was heading south to secure some clinching evidence. I remember him saying that: “clinching evidence”. I thought it rather melodramatic.’
‘How long did he stay on his second visit to Moscow?’
‘Just two days. I was about to head south myself, to Nizhnii Novgorod. I have some excellent contacts there.’ That patronising tone again. ‘We decided to travel the first part of the way together. Then I headed further east, and he went south, in the direction of Astrakhan. I do not know if he ever reached it.’
‘And those despatches he wrote?’ A sudden hope flared in my mind that they might still be here, in which case I would be able to learn what it was that Rocksley had discovered in Narva, and what were his suspicions of Godunov. They would be in code, but that would not be a problem. He would use one of our regular ones, and I had them off by heart.
‘Oh, the despatches went in the satchel with other business papers. We send them regularly up to St Nicholas to await the fleet. If there is some matter which is exceptionally urgent, we will sometimes send it overland, but that is risky and generally means that a messenger has to ride through Poland.’
‘This batch of documents was not sent that way?’ Confiscated, I thought, at the border.
‘Nay, there was nothing urgent. Come to think of it, that might have been the satchel that met with an accident. I only heard about it went I arrived back from Nizhnii Novgorod. The clerks were complaining at having to copy all the business documents out again.’
‘What kind of accident?’ I felt a tightening in my stomach. I knew this was important.
‘The messenger had a fall from his horse before he reached Yaroslavl,’ he said. ‘By the time our people recovered his body, the satchel was gone. These Muscovites will steal anything they can lay their hands on.’
‘His body!’
‘Nasty business. Someone had strung a rope across the road. Caught him right across the throat. Probably killed him even before he hit the ground. The whole country is swarming with outlaws – these peasants who won’t pay their taxes. Steal anything, they will. Kill you for the shirt off your back.’
‘Had they stolen anything else, besides the satchel?’
I held my breath.
‘Nay,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Come to think of it, they hadn’t.’
At last! I thought. Despite the difficulty of extracting anything useful from Alexander Wingrave, a number of very important facts had emerged. Sitting on the bed in my room, I went through them in my mind, trying to put an ordered narrative together.
Rocksley had expected to track down in Narva the rogue former employee of the Company who had passed compromising information about England to the Spanish. He would then join the Company fleet and return to London, to report on his findings.
Instead, he had learned something there concerning Godunov. Treachery by Godunov. Which had sent him hurrying back to Moscow, where he was not expected.
While staying in Moscow for just two days, he had kept out of sight, writing long despatches for London.
He had then left for the south in company with Wingrave, parting with him when their routes diverged. He had not been seen since.
In the meantime, the despatches had been sent north, but before the messenger could even reach Yaroslavl, he had been ambushed and murdered. Not by outlaws, who would have stolen his clothes and money, but by someone who was only interested in the contents of the satchel. The ordinary business reports travelled safely all the time, therefore it was known that, on this occasion, the satchel contained incriminating documents by Rocksley. Ergo, Godunov knew that Rocksley suspected him of treachery to Muscovy’s ally England and had sent someone to steal the despatches.
What was not clear was how Godunov had gained the information. Either an agent of his in Narva had sent word to the
Kremlin, or else Rocksley had been followed back to Moscow. It would have been easy to deduce that the next posting of documents by messenger to the St Nicholas house would contain despatches from Rocksley.
However, what was abundantly clear was that Rocksley had been a marked man from that moment on. It was unlikely that he was still alive.
What should I do?
I could return north with Austin Foulkes and report my discoveries to the Company governor back in London. Once I was given permission to leave Moscow, of course. That was the safest course, the sensible one. But a nagging doubt troubled me. What if Rocksley were not dead?
And besides, I still did not know why he had set out for Astrakhan. The explanation would have been in those despatches. I fervently hoped that Godunov did not have any skilled code-breakers at his command. Thomas Phelippes’s codes – which Rocksley would have used – were complex and sophisticated, difficult for anyone to break, particularly a foreigner with poor English. I had not encountered any English speakers amongst the Muscovites so far, but that did not mean that the Kremlin had none.
I hoped Rocksley had memorised the codes, and did not carry the keys with him. If he did, and he had been caught, even a Russian with poor English would be able to decipher the despatches.
The day grew dark as I sat there, chewing my thumb nail.
Astrakhan lay on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Did that mean that Godunov was sending out information via that route, and the papers captured on the Spanish ship out of Narva were the exception? Nay, I thought of something else. Perhaps Godunov had originally used Narva, a convenient direct route to the west and formerly Russian controlled, to send out messages before the latest outbreak of war with the Swedes. It was likely that some Muscovites had remained in Narva, just as some former Company men had done.
Once the war had started – and it had been foreseen – he had switched to a route via the Caspian. Further to go, a complicated route. That was why Rocksley had gone there, to root out this new source of harm to England.