Let’s see how far you’ll go, old Secretary: ‘I don’t want to be Irish. Suppose I won’t do it. What’d you do then?’ She hunched her shoulders.
The Lord Treasurer returned to his writing; this was Walsingham’s field. The Queen’s Secretary said: ‘We should have to suppose that your sympathies did not lie with your country. We should have to suppose that they had been alienated by a baleful influence, someone who had preached sedition to you during your bringing up.’
Will? Was it Will he’d got trapped in all those syllables?
‘Guard, Master Barbary would profit by some air. Take him on deck.’
She was lifted bodily from her chair and shoved out of the cabin and up its steps. Up on deck the air was delicately scented; the moonlight polished the river and the ranks of rowers. They had stopped rowing. She had been so occupied down in the cabin that she hadn’t noticed the cessation of the boat’s movement. The barge had been tied up at a landing place on the starboard bank, the taffrail gate opened and a gangplank put in place. The guard jerked Barbary towards it. On the bank, where a lane led up from the river, some men holding lighted cressets clustered round a gibbet. Usually such gibbets suspended the iron-banded corpse of some riverside malefactor which emitted a stinking warning against evil-doing on every passing breeze. Although this one was empty, it wasn’t going to be for long. Two ropes were being slung over it. There was going to be a double hanging.
Funny time for a hanging. Barbary began to pant. ‘Who’re the swingers?’ Was one of them to be her? The guard neither answered nor moved. The Maytime bank was unreal, a stage. The flickering lights by the gibbet distorted the gasping faces of the men who were now being hauled up by the ropes, whose hands clawed and whose legs kicked. One was Cuckold Dick. The other man had only one leg to kick; his left stuck out at stiff angles, being artificial.
‘Will,’ screamed Barbary. The guard picked her up by her belt so that in her struggle to get down the gangplank to reach Dick and Will she found herself swimming in the air. She swam and kicked and fought as she was carried back into the cabin and slammed onto the floor. She tried to get up to reach the door but was slammed down again. She crawled towards the Lord Treasurer, a shrieking, weeping petitioner. ‘Stop it. Tell ’em. I’ll do anything. Don’t hang them.’
‘Hang who?’ enquired the Lord Treasurer kindly.
‘I’m begging,’ wept Barbary.
The Lord Treasurer addressed a servant who’d been in the shadows. ‘My compliments to the captain and ask if anyone is being hanged.’ Barbary struggled to get back on deck, but her guard held her firm. Through the nightmare she heard the repeat: ‘Being hanged? Being hanged?’
‘Will,’ she screamed.
There was an arhythmic step on the stairs down into the cabin and a sailor limped into the room. He was pushing a whey-faced Cuckold Dick before him. ‘Yes, my lord?’
‘Are you hanging anyone, Master Corbet? This young man seems under the impression that an execution is in progress.’
‘Execution, my lord?’ Master Corbet grinned at Barbary, ‘No, my lord. Her Majesty wouldn’t like it, it being her own barge like. We only stopped to change the rowers.’
‘Stopped to change the rowers,’ confided the Lord Treasurer to Barbary. Mr Secretary Walsingham waved the captain to take Cuckold Dick away. Before he left, Master Corbet grinned again at Barbary. He cocked his head to one side, extended his tongue and jerked at an invisible halter.
‘It wasn’t Will, Barb,’ said Cuckold Dick with difficulty from the doorway. Barbary nodded. The sailor had an ammunition leg. She could see it as he left. Acting out a hanging in the moonlight he would have looked very much like Will Clampett.
‘You see?’ said the Lord Treasurer to Barbary. Barbary nodded. She got up off the floor and dragged herself back to her chair. The barge was under way again as if its rhythm had never been interrupted and as if her heart was being unreasonable in not beating in time to its oars. She wiped the snivel off her nose with her sleeve. She felt little ill-will towards the Treasurer behind the desk, not even to the bastard Walsingham. They were both Authority and in the world she moved in Authority was as capricious as violent weather, holding the right to impose torture and death, always had, always would. As soon expect compassion from a hurricane.
She’d asked and Authority’d answered, and the card it held was a winner. A cruncher. It said it could hang Dick or Will any time it wanted. Dick for his crossbiting and Will for treason maybe, or talking sedition – and God knows he did, though it was just his way. You couldn’t trump that one. She’d asked and Authority had drawn her a picture as clear as the portrait of the queen hanging on the bulkhead. Lord High Treasurer of England and Lord High Secretary of England they might be, but they were no different from the Upright Man really, just better dressed.
She took in a shuddering breath. ‘Where is Will, if you’ll pardon my asking?’
‘You refer to Master Clampett?’ asked the Lord Treasurer, as if the subject hadn’t come up before. ‘I flatter me provision has been made for him that, if he’d had choice, the man could have made no better for himself. He has been put to work in a cannon foundry. You shall see him soon enough, for the foundry belongs to the gentleman to whom you will be squire, Sir Henry Sidney.’
‘Squire?’
‘Most certainly. Having found you at last we must fit you for your new estate, as we have done with other Irish nobles, apprentice you in the ways of kingship so that when you assume your place at the head of your people you can lead them into proper obedience to the queen who is their sovereign and yours. You have no memory of Ireland it seems…’
Not bloody surprising either, thought Barbary, never having been there.
‘… and must be reminded of its customs.’
Barbary, thought Barbary, they’re going to make you an actor. And after all you done to keep yourself decent. Walsingham had long gone back to his writing. The field was now Burghley’s.
‘You must be acquainted with power and how to use it for the glorification of God and Her Majesty. Riches shall be yours…’
If she’d known her Bible better Barbary might have realised she was being taken to the top of an exceeding high mountain to be shown all the kingdoms – well, one kingdom – of the world, and the glory of them. And if, in enumerating the castles, tributes and estates which would be Prince Barbary’s, the Lord Treasurer raised images of English places like Nonsuch, the Tower, and Burghley House alongside English-type manors with rosy-cheeked, cap-doffing tenantry, stableyards, orchards and dairymaids, then perhaps his own ignorance of a country he had never visited was as much to blame as Barbary’s. Perhaps.
As she listened, Barbary calculated. You think you got me, old Treasurer. And maybe you have. And maybe, when the queen’s chief minister offers me riches, I don’t mind being got. Not when he holds what cards he does, and not when I got an ace hidden up me trunks meself. All right, old man, for Will and Dick and for some profit I’ll play along for now.
She saw Burghley glance at the hourglass on his desk. ‘But we must not overwhelm our young prince.’ He stood up and coughed to indicate that Walsingham should join him in his salute. Walsingham hissed as he did so.
The Lord Treasurer of England and the Queen’s Secretary bowed to Barbary Clampett of Lambeth Marshes, whom they were leading into deception, by whom they were being deceived, and with whom, side by side, they were setting out to deceive the people of Ireland.
With equal ceremony, Barbary got up and bowed back.
For a moment the two chief tricksters, the old and the young, highest in the land and the lowest, were touched by the admiration which only professionals can feel for each other. Barbary winked at the Lord Treasurer: ‘You ever thought of taking up cony-catching, your worship?’
* * *
They let her join Cuckold Dick on deck where he sat on a hawser, rubbing his neck, still managing to look respectable, like a merchant who’d been hard done by. As ever, his face wa
s calm as a plate of porridge, which it resembled and out of which his small eyes looked on the world with uncondemnatory acceptance. Born in prison to a mother who was later hanged for killing her pimp, he had, he always said, lost the faculty of surprise very early. To Barbary he had seemed part of the natural scenery of her life, she hadn’t really considered him. The fierce protective affection his vulnerability now inspired in her was a revelation.
And he had been hard done by. His aldermanic girth had been reduced by being imprisoned without charge in the Bridewell for nearly as long as Barbary had been in the Tower. ‘Couple of shoulder-tappers picked me up just after I oiled that warden to give you the dice,’ he told her. ‘Wanted to know all about you and Rob, how old, born where, what parents, the whole Jesse Tree. Well, I didn’t know, did I, Barb? And what I did, I wasn’t telling, though they was so powerful anxious to find out they breeched me.’
A breeching was a flogging. ‘I’m sorry, Dick.’
‘Not your fault, Barb. What they got, they got from the Upright Man. Brought in a week after, he was, and it was him blew you. They promised to breech him if he didn’t.’ He looked at her apologetically on Abraham’s behalf. ‘You can see it from his side, Barb. He’d only recent had the cart tail as you know, and his stripes was still sore.’ Dick rarely saw wrong in anybody, not because he was liberal but because he was that despair of the Church, a man colour blind to the whiteness of good and the blackness of evil. His own refusal to give information about his friends he did not regard as high-principled or courageous but merely a matter of being able to withstand the pain at the time, whereas the Upright Man could not.
‘Go on.’
‘That’s it. Next thing I was on this water-cheat, next thing after that I was dancing the gallows’ waltz.’
There were no questions as to what she was doing here, what he was, why he had endured a mock hanging on a bank of the Thames on this lovely night. Things happened and there it was, just another instalment of the dark saga that was his life.
Nevertheless Barbary, keeping an eye on the rowers to see that none of them listened, told him. She owed him that much and anyway she had a desperate need to confide in someone. She told him everything.
‘You’re a female?’
‘Yes.’
‘Been one all this time?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, watch us apples swim.’
He was surprised, but he adjusted his image of her without too much effort, and without affecting his attitude towards her. For a man who made his living by acting sexual jealousy and passion, he had little enough in his make-up. Looking back, Barbary realised that Cuckold Dick’s relationship with the bawds, come to that the men and boys of the Order, had always been platonic. What was remarkable, she thought, was that this asexuality had been unremarked. Dick’s acceptance of other people’s foibles was so thorough as to make his own seem natural.
‘Do you think they’d let me get off now, Barb?’ He was becoming increasingly uneasy the further he was swept away from his home territory.
‘I asked.’ He’d served their purpose as an Awful Warning to her, so why couldn’t he be freed?
‘What’d they say?’
‘They said you’d have to be found honest employment.’
There was silence as they reflected on the novelty of the idea. The moon was setting and the time drum had lengthened its beat so that the rowing could keep within the bounds of the look-out’s vision. They were heading into darkness.
‘Dick.’
‘What?’
‘How’d you fancy becoming apprenticed to an apprentice Irish prince?’
Chapter Six
If there was an Elizabethan Eden it was Penshurst. The manor was at that moment in the possession of the finest of their generation, a focus of the noblest aspiration of which England was capable, gathering place for its best minds. There was no canker here; what you saw was what there was, and all of it beautiful.
Barbary saw it first at night. She and Lord Treasurer Burghley and Mr Secretary Walsingham disembarked at its river steps, where she was parted from Cuckold Dick, who was sent off to take up a position in the servants’ quarters. The guests were put into sedan chairs. It was a new experience for Barbary, but nervousness spoiled the fun of it. She leaned out of the chair’s window to watch Cuckold Dick being led away through the trees like a man picking his way among volcanic lava. He hated countryside, and this was as deep a countryside as he’d ever encountered. But here, in the park, it had been civilised. Still with her head out of the swaying chair, Barbary saw that sheep had obediently nibbled the grass to carpet length, oaks and beeches had been protected by railings to grow to statuesque proportions, their lower branches spreading just above man-height. Under one of the biggest oaks a silvery herd of deer posed long enough for a spell to be broken when they vanished in suspended bounds.
After a while they were decanted from the chairs into a glade. Down an avenue of trees leading into it approached what seemed, in the distance, to be mobile snowdrops. A whisper like water grew into chatter and laughter and the notes of a mandolin. The snowdrops became lanterns and people in pale silk and satin, indolent and magnificent strollers who at that moment imprinted an image on Barbary’s mind so lovely that time and disillusion were not to tarnish it.
Closer, she saw they were glorious but mad. They all held jewelled masks, several men were knights in armour, some of the ladies had wings attached to the backs of their dresses, there were dwarves with antlers growing out of their caps. An enormous dog carried a yoked collar which gave him an extra head on each side of his real one.
A tall, stout man stepped forward to bellow an elaborate welcome, exchanging bows with the Lord Treasurer and the Secretary. Barbary heard Lord Burghley murmur: ‘How’s it going?’
The big man dropped his voice. ‘So far so good. Not a cross word out of her. Is this him?’
Lord Burghley’s hand pushed Barbary forward. ‘My lord, may I present our Prince of Connaught, also known as Master Barbary Clampett. Master Clampett, this is Sir Henry Sidney.’
Sir Henry surveyed Barbary without enthusiasm. ‘Are you sure?’
‘His background fits. He had the torque. Experts have examined it and judge it as true royal Irish from those parts.’ Burghley pushed Barbary again, gently. ‘Show my lord.’
Barbary’s grubby neck had regained the necklet. She took it off and held it out, remembering to take her cap off at the same time.
Sir Henry gestured to a link boy to hold a lantern closer and looked from Barbary to the necklet and back again. ‘They all look alike to me.’
Torques or Irish? wondered Barbary.
Sir Henry nodded at her. ‘Welcome, Donal mac Owen O’Flaherty, and may we be as true foster father and son as were Tyrone and I to each other.’
‘We’ll give it a try, eh?’ said Barbary politely.
Sir Henry’s tufted eyebrows went up and Walsingham hissed. Burghley said hastily: ‘He has been brought up in the rudery of the commons, as I explained in my letter. But he is quick to learn.’
‘He’d better be. Does he know he’s to meet the queen?’ He beckoned to one of the women. ‘My dear, here is another wild Irish for you to tame. Donal, I present you to your liege lady and foster mother, Lady Sidney.’
‘Call me Barbary, lady,’ said Barbary, bowing.
Lady Sidney held her mask away from her face to nod, and revealed that she had no face. Despite the Lord Treasurer’s warning grip on her shoulder, Barbary yelped. Beneath the woman’s jewelled cap there was nothing, blackness, a face-shaped hole in the universe. Out of it came words: ‘She’s waiting, Henry.’
Sir Henry nodded. ‘We’re in the middle of a fantastical,’ he said to Burghley, who indicated sympathy. Sir Henry stood back and shouted at the top of his considerable voice, ‘My Lords, you are well come into the land of Faerie, among enchantments and chivalry, gods and goddesses, demons and full dreadful hobgoblins. Yet we, its denizens, are sore beref
t, for the queen of this place, our Belphoebe, the Virgin of our souls, has been spirited away and we cannot find her.’
Barbary heard Lord Burghley sigh; it had been a long journey and for most of it he had been at work. However… He raised his voice to an artificial level: ‘What news is this that pierces me? Our Faerie Queen lost? Let search be set in train.’
As Barbary watched, the Lord Treasurer of England, the Queen’s Secretary, assorted nobility, adventurers, scholars and poets began running around expressing pantomimic concern as they peered under bushes. Battle the watch, Barb, she said to herself, you’ve landed among lunatics. She reached out and caught the liripipe of a dwarf skipping by. ‘Who you all looking for, Shorty?’
The dwarf put his tongue out. ‘The queen, of course.’
‘The real queen? Of England?’
‘Of course. And don’t call me Shorty, rustyballocks.’ He ran off.
‘She’s over there,’ Barbary shouted after him. It was obvious where Her Majesty was. A white satin shoe with a diamond-encrusted buckle was sticking out from behind a beech. Barbary shifted her position so that she could get a better view and saw that the shoe belonged to someone who was concealed in a cushioned bower apparently made out of flowers. The queen? The queen. Barbary, whose idea of playing a game was restricted to cards or dice, was amazed. Is this what the Governor of the Faith got up to off duty?
She grabbed at a tall young man who was passing. ‘She’s over there.’
He looked down at her with amusement. ‘Shut up.’
Barbary retired and sat down on the grass to listen to the over-agonised shouts: ‘Phoebus, come back to us. Reveal yourself, O sun of our eyes.’ She watched the Lord High Treasurer shaking boughs as if the queen had perched herself up on branches. She saw a transformed Mr Secretary Walsingham baying: ‘Where are you, O Diana,’ all the while avoiding looking towards the bower. She watched a giggling maid of honour taken behind some bushes by a very good-looking, very tall and dark, steel-armoured knight. She began to doze off.
The Pirate Queen Page 11