by Ann Swinfen
‘It is a clever new device,’ I said. ‘Using lenses.’
I explained how the perspective trunk worked, but I do not think they believed me.
‘You would need to try it for yourselves,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you can come to one of the meetings at Durham House and see it there.’
Even as I spoke, I knew it would never happen. These were companions from another life. Back in London we would part.
At last the muddy, shoal-ridden estuary of the Thames came in sight. Recalling how long it had taken us on the outward voyage to travel from London to the estuary, I dreaded how many days it would take to make our way up river against the current. Briefly I contemplated going ashore with one of the horses and riding to London, but dismissed the idea. My responsibility at the moment was to Gregory and Thomas, to the report on Godunov’s treachery, even to the horses. I would need to contain myself in patience.
However, our captain was skilful, there was a brisk wind from the east, and flood tides helped us on our way. It took us three days to reach Deptford. We anchored there overnight, knowing that with the morning’s incoming tide we would reach the Customs House by midday.
That night I barely slept and before dawn I was on deck with my knapsack and satchel at my feet, watching the sailors hoist the anchor and unfurl the sails for the very last of this interminable voyage. It was not long before Thomas and Gregory joined me. As we watched the familiar poor outskirts on the north bank slip past, I was reminded sharply of standing with Simon and Pyotr on the Bona Esperanza. Simon would not know that I was coming. He would be expecting me to return with the Muscovy fleet early in September. In this fine summer weather, the players would be busy, performing a new piece every few days. He would be absorbed in his work, never thinking of me.
The captain came to stand beside us as we neared the Legal Quays.
‘I sent word by messenger from Deptford,’ he said. ‘We have permission to moor at the Muscovy Company’s St Botolph’s Wharf. It will be easier to land the horses there than at some of the other moorings.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You have been more than kind to us, and we are grateful.’ I smiled. ‘And now you may have your own cabin again.’
He bowed his acknowledgements, then hurried off to supervise the delicate mooring of the ship, which was towed once more by the pinnace until it was brought to rest beside the quay where I had embarked a year ago. It felt longer than a year. A lifetime.
The next two hours were filled with bustle and hard work. The horses were landed, but were unsteady on their legs after so long confined to their canvas shelter. Thomas led two of them, Gregory and I one each, through the streets to the London house of the Company. Gregory and I had agreed that we would go together to Master Marler the next day and arrange a meeting with him and with the governor, to report on everything that had happened in Muscovy. I would also make enquiries as to the whereabouts of Thomas Phelippes, so that we might ask his advice about presenting Gregory’s report to the Privy Council. Gregory had occupied himself on the sea voyage making another copy, so that we now each held one.
After we had delivered the horses, with an explanation, to the grooms at Company House, Thomas, Gregory and I stood awkwardly in the street, knowing that it was time to part. Somehow the afternoon had disappeared.
‘Let us go for a mug of decent English beer,’ Thomas suggested, ‘before we take our leave.’
‘Tomorrow,’ I said, ‘I’ll be glad to drink a beer with you. For you must come with us to see Master Marler, Thomas. Tonight I am really tired. I want to see whether I can reclaim my lodgings from the friend who has been occupying them. And I must fetch my dog.’
They agreed that we should all have not only a beer but a meal together the next day, so I bade them God speed and hurried away over the Bridge. All the time we were seeing to the horses I had been seized by a sudden fear that something might have happened to Rikki. As I struggled through the crowds, I thought I heard someone calling behind me, but I pretended not to hear. I would see them tomorrow. The Bridge was more crowded than ever. After our weeks in the vast emptiness of Muscovy, I felt penned in, so that I could hardly breathe. Near the southern end of the Bridge I broke into a run, my satchel flapping against my side.
There was the gatehouse of St Thomas’s, and Tom Read sitting outside, as he liked to do at the end of a busy summer’s day, taking the air and enjoying the sunshine. I could only see Swifty, lying across his master’s feet.
Then a furry explosion burst from the other side of Tom’s stool and was hurtling toward me. I dropped to my knees, else I would have been knocked over. I had my arms around his rough familiar coat and he was licking every bit of my face he could reach, licking away my tears.
I felt a hand on the back of my neck.
‘Kit, are you weeping at seeing us again?’
‘I was afraid something had happened to Rikki. Of course I am not weeping.’ I rubbed the back of my hand across my face. ‘How did you know I was back?’
‘Oh,’ he said vaguely, ‘word gets around. You know that all players are gossips.’
He grabbed my hands and pulled me to my feet, though Rikki circled around me protectively.
‘It is good to see you, Simon,’ I said calmly, remembering how we had parted. Did he know?
He studied my face. ‘It was bad, was it?’
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Some of it was very bad.’
He flung his arm round my shoulders in his familiar comradely way, and Rikki turned and trotted away along the river.
‘Come along,’ Simon said.
‘I am coming.’
It was beginning to rain. A soft, warm, blessed, English rain. I didn’t care. I was going home.
Historical Note
The Muscovy Company came about in a somewhat unexpected way. In 1553, an English expedition funded by a large group of merchants and noblemen set out to search for the so-called ‘Northeast Passage’, a sea route around the north of mainland Europe, via the Arctic Circle, and down into the China seas. If it existed, it would provide a much shorter journey for English merchant ships trading with India, China, and the Spice Islands than the vastly longer route around the bottom of Africa, which meant running the gauntlet of Spanish privateers. Geographical knowledge was growing apace at the time. The general shape and dimensions of the globe were understood, but the territory beyond the north of Norway was terra incognita.
Three ships set out; only one returned. The Edward Bonaventure commanded by Richard Chancellor had quite a tale to tell. They had discovered the White Sea and anchored at St Nicholas, where they realised they were in Muscovy. Chancellor travelled to Moscow, where he was received by the Tsar, Ivan the Terrible, and presented a letter from King Edward VI, explaining that England wanted to open up friendly trade routes with other lands. By the time Chancellor reached London again in the following year, the boy king was dead and his sister Mary, married to Philip of Spain, was on the throne.
Mary and Philip were prepared to support trade with Muscovy, so the original backers of the expedition created a new organisation, the first ever joint-stock company. Shareholders would invest their money to provide ships, merchandise, and paid employees. No individual would trade with Muscovy on a personal basis, all transactions would pass through the company. Losses would be sustained by the shareholders and profits would be shared between them. This new organisation, the Muscovy Company, was to provide the commercial model for all joint-stock companies of the future. Its best-known early successor was the East India Company.
Although the original plan had been to import luxury goods, like furs, it was soon discovered that more mundane products would provide the bulk of the merchandise, such as wax for candles and official seals, train oil (derived from blubber), canvas and cordage for the navy. The rope factory at Kolmogory (later Kholmogory) was another innovation which would subsequently prove a model for similar enterprises throughout the British Empire. The raw material and labour were cheap in
Muscovy, but the country lacked skilled rope-makers, who were sent out from England to train the local men. Initially the Muscovy Company had exclusive trading rights throughout the Tsar’s realms, although these were gradually whittled away over the years. Even so, the Company continued to trade, through the new city of Arkhangelsk built near St Nicholas, until the Revolution in 1917.
And what of the two lost ships? As is mentioned in the story, they were found intact, safely anchored in the estuary of the Varzina river the following year, plentifully supplied with food, all on board dead. At the time it was believed that they had died of the cold, although it was strange that they all seemed to have died at the same time, while occupied in various tasks. Today, another theory has been put forward. The shores of the estuary are scattered with sea coal, which the men seem to have gathered as fuel for their heating stoves. All the doors, windows, and hatches were tightly closed against the cold. It seems more than likely, therefore, that the men died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
By 1590-91, when Kit is in Muscovy, Ivan the Terrible was dead and his ineffectual son Fyodor sat on the throne, while Fyodor’s brother-in-law Boris Godunov was the de facto ruler. Fyodor was childless, the only other possible heir to the throne being his eight-year-old half brother, Dmitri, whom Godunov had exiled to Uglich, fearing that a party of boyars would lead a coup to replace the useless Fyodor with Dmitri and snatch the reins of power from Godunov. The rest is history. Godunov became the next Tsar, and on his death civil war broke out, the Time of Troubles.
The search for the Northeast Passage continued to frustrate generations of mariners. It was finally discovered by the Finnish-Swedish explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld in 1878, although it is claimed (possibly without evidence) that the Portuguese navigator David Melgueiro made the passage from east to west as early as 1660.
A number of the characters in this story were real historical figures. I have been as truthful to their appearance and nature as the historical sources make possible.
I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Carolyn Pouncy, who has brought her formidable expertise to bear on Kit’s travels in Muscovy. Any surviving faux pas are entirely my own responsibility.
More by This Author
The Anniversary
The Travellers
A Running Tide
The Testament of Mariam
Flood
Betrayal
This Rough Ocean
The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez
The Enterprise of England
The Portuguese Affair
Bartholomew Fair
Suffer the Little Children
Praise for Ann Swinfen’s Novels
‘an absorbing and intricate tapestry of family history and private memories … warm, generous, healing and hopeful’
Victoria Glendinning
‘I very much admired the pace of the story. The changes of place and time and the echoes and repetitions – things lost and found, and meetings and partings’
Penelope Fitzgerald
‘I enjoyed this serious, scrupulous novel … a novel of character … [and] a suspense story in which present and past mysteries are gradually explained’
Jessica Mann, Sunday Telegraph
'The author … has written a powerful new tale of passion and heartbreak ... What a marvellous storyteller Ann Swinfen is – she has a wonderful ear for dialogue and she brings her characters vividly to life.'
Publishing News
‘Her writing …[paints] an amazingly detailed and vibrant picture of flesh and blood human beings, not only the symbols many of them have become…but real and believable and understandable.’
Helen Brown, Courier and Advertiser
‘She writes with passion and the book, her fourth, is shot through with brilliant description and scholarship...[it] is a timely reminder of the harsh realities, and the daily humiliations, of the Roman occupation of First Century Israel. You can almost smell the dust and blood.’
Peter Rhodes, Express and Star
The Author
Ann Swinfen spent her childhood partly in England and partly on the east coast of America. She was educated at Somerville College, Oxford, where she read Classics and Mathematics and married a fellow undergraduate, the historian David Swinfen. While bringing up their five children and studying for a postgraduate MSc in Mathematics and a BA and PhD in English Literature, she had a variety of jobs, including university lecturer, translator, freelance journalist and software designer. She served for nine years on the governing council of the Open University and for five years worked as a manager and editor in the technical author division of an international computer company, but gave up her full-time job to concentrate on her writing, while continuing part-time university teaching in English Literature. In 1995 she founded Dundee Book Events, a voluntary organisation promoting books and authors to the general public.
Her first three novels, The Anniversary, The Travellers, and A Running Tide, all with a contemporary setting but also an historical resonance, were published by Random House, with translations into Dutch and German. The Testament of Mariam marked something of a departure. Set in the first century, it recounts, from an unusual perspective, one of the most famous and yet ambiguous stories in human history. At the same time it explores life under a foreign occupying force, in lands still torn by conflict to this day. Her second historical novel, Flood, takes place in the fenlands of East Anglia during the seventeenth century, where the local people fought desperately to save their land from greedy and unscrupulous speculators. The second novel in the Fenland Series, Betrayal, continues the story of the search for legal redress and security for the embattled villagers. This Rough Ocean is a novel based on the real-life experiences of the Swinfen family during the 1640s, at the time of the English Civil War, when John Swynfen was imprisoned for opposing the killing of the king, and his wife Anne had to fight for the survival of her children and dependents.
Currently the author is working on a late sixteenth century series, featuring a young Marrano physician who is recruited as a code-breaker and spy in Walsingham’s secret service. The first book in the series is The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez, the second is The Enterprise of England, the third is The Portuguese Affair, the fourth is Bartholomew Fair, the fifth is Suffer the Little Children and the sixth is Voyage to Muscovy.
She now lives in Broughty Ferry, on the northeast coast of Scotland, with her husband, formerly vice-principal of the University of Dundee, and a rescue kitten.
www.annswinfen.com
http://myBook.to/CAseries