‘How is the queen?’ she asked.
Mr Secretary Cecil’s gaze was fixed on the north and less fashionable side of the Strand. ‘It seems, mistress, you are to have the opportunity to see for yourself.’ Barbary hitched herself along the seat to look where he was looking. Another crowd was up ahead at Burghley House which had its gates decently closed, but standing outside them, attracting the attention, were four tabarded trumpeters, the royal arms on a square of gold cloth attached to their trumpets. The Queen of England was paying a visit to the sickbed of her Lord Treasurer.
Barbary glanced at Sir John Perrot, who had fallen asleep and was snoring. Oh Jesus, if he saw her and began a harangue… ‘I think, my lord…’
‘I think so too. Excuse me.’ He leaned over to open the flap to the coachmen. ‘Cecil House.’ He gave the order mildly, but they were thrown to one side as the coach swerved instantly to the right under an archway. Gates opened at once and they were into a courtyard fronting a small palace of a house, steps, ornate doorway, and oriel windows set in gleaming grey new stone. Cecil House: another addition since she’d been away. A fountain played in a newly planted flower bed. On the left, over the garden wall, loomed the roof and chimneys of Burghley House’s eastern wing. She didn’t have time to look around, the Elf’s fingers were fluttering orders, servants were helping Sir John Perrot out of the coach. Cecil dismounted and handed Barbary out, and managed to get to the top of the steps before his guests in order to bow them indoors. The manoeuvre was deft but not without difficulty, for he was crippled. His furred cloak couldn’t disguise the crookedness of his shoulders, nor the way his feet splayed out as he walked. He was very small, which made him look more gnomish than ever. Barbary didn’t like to think what emotion the child he had been had suppressed to perfect that unwavering cheerfulness, or what bullying and jeers had made it necessary.
In pain again, Sir John was persuaded into the bed of a temporary apartment, but Barbary was taken to another room and left there. It was a beautiful room, the room of an educated and busy mind, and Barbary, wishing to know that mind, had no qualms about investigating it.
Everything in it, except a portrait of Elizabeth, was functional. The books that lined the walls were of every language known to Barbary, including Irish, and many that weren’t. Sea charts were in one drawer she opened, diagrams of the human skeleton in another. Astrolabes, globes, measuring compasses, a framed map of the heavens.
A servant came in bearing a tray of wine, meat patties and fruit for her, and through the door he opened she could see an anteroom full of clerks writing with the energy of digging badgers.
When the man had gone she munched a pattie and crossed to the more interesting door on the other side of the room. It was very small, Cecil-sized, and very strong. It was locked – she tried it – and somebody was knocking on it. A code knock. Rap-rap. Tat-tat-ta. Rap-rap. She said: ‘Who’s there?’ but there was silence.
She went to the casement, opened it, and leaned out. The room was at the end of the house and the little door led to a staircase which came out into a covered walkway. It ran the length of the garden to its end wall beyond which – she orientated herself – must be Covent Garden. She thought she heard a crunch of gravel as whoever it was made his or her disappointed exit.
Well, well. It would be nice to think that Cecil entertained exotic women in this room; nice, because the little man scared her and she’d have liked him to have a human weakness. But it was unlikely; the room wasn’t furnished for dalliance. And the complicated knock had taken her back to the night all those years ago when she’d followed the barnacle that had followed Rob. That covered walk, the staircase, the door, were for Mr Secretary’s secret informants.
When Cecil returned she was surprised all over again by how small he was. He’d already gained greater stature in her mind. He climbed up onto a chair behind his desk and beamed at her. ‘We do not have as much time as one would like. My people will send word when Her Majesty is ready to leave my father so that we may waylay her.’
‘My lord,’ said Barbary earnestly, ‘it’s really not a good idea to bring me in front of the queen.’
‘There’s no denying,’ said the Elf, still beaming, ‘that Her Majesty holds grievances against your good self and Sir John Perrot, though the grievances are more personal than is warranted by both your political services. And it is hoped that she can be disabused of them in each case.’
‘Eh? What political services?’
‘Perhaps it should be said,’ the Elf said brightly, ‘that one is cognisant of the reasons why the Lord Treasurer sent you to Ireland in the first place. It is true he was unaware at the time of your… ah, sex. Nevertheless, the results you have achieved are as good as any man’s and worthy of your country’s gratitude.’
Barbary was cautious. ‘Oh?’
‘Indeed.’ He shuffled through some papers. ‘There is here a gratifying letter from your kinswoman Mistress Grace O’Malley offering to surrender herself and make full and honest submission to the Crown. There is another from the Earl of Tyrone acquainting us of his intention to bring in Lord O’Donnell for the same purpose, in which he mentions that he was persuaded by your advice on the matter. You have done well.’
Barbary sat back in her chair, thinking. Grace, fortuitously, and the O’Neill, deliberately, had managed to put her in a good light with this powerful little man and his father. She saw it from Burghley’s and Cecil’s point of view. They had cast her, like bread, upon the waters. She’d disappeared into them – she was pretty sure they had no idea of what had gone on in Connaught – and after many, many days the bread had been returned, very nicely.
The Elf interrupted, suddenly sharp: ‘Was there treasure?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s called The Treasure. But it’s a book. A history of Connaught women.’
He surprised her by believing her, though wistfully. ‘Nevertheless you must have gained a rare and unusual and valuable view of Irish affairs which would be of use in our administration of that unfortunate country. Indeed, with your own, special… ah, sources over here, it is to be hoped that you will continue to serve the State.’
‘What sources are those?’
‘It’s known as the Order, is it not? The presumption that you kept up the, ah, connection was enforced by the fact that you still have in your employment the man, Dick Robertson.’
So Cuckold Dick’s surname was Robertson. Mr Secretary Cecil knew something she never had. He knew a lot. She took another pattie to give herself time. He was going to use her, just as his father had used her. Which meant she could use him. But this was no ordinary cony. You caught conies as quick as this one by telling the truth, or at least, part of the truth.
He clambered down from his chair to pour her wine, and while he was doing it, she said: ‘But as far as the queen goes, I’m still in the shit.’
She watched his reaction. This little power-in-the-land would trust her more if she didn’t put on airs and graces and pretend to be a lady. The father had sent off a Cockney sparrow to Ireland, the son would be reassured if it was the same Cockney sparrow that had come back. Cecil’s pouring hand wavered for a moment, but didn’t spill a drop.
‘There are certainly problems,’ he said, ‘but one has made representation to Her Majesty of your work on her behalf. And if there is to be a reconciliation it must be now, before your husband comes back from the Low Countries, since she will require the monopoly on his attention.’
Barbary mentally translated. Rob was a favourite. The queen didn’t like favourites to have wives. If they did have a wife, she must be invisible. If the queen was to forgive her, it must be before she was forced to become invisible. But why was Cecil so anxious to endear her to the queen?
He returned to his desk and interrogated her on Ireland. The mask remained inexorably perky as he asked his questions and scratched notes of her answers on a wax tablet in hieroglyphics she presumed were his own shorthand. At once she realised at leas
t one reason why she was of value; she had what virtually no other living soul could give him, a two-sided view of the Irish situation. He hoped she was English enough to be loyal, yet Irish enough to tell him what was actually going on. He didn’t trust her, she doubted if he trusted anybody, but he could weigh her evidence with the rest of his enormous knowledge – and how much he knew about Ireland surprised her – to come to a balanced appraisal.
Knowledge is power, she thought.
She told him the truth, not all of it, but truth nevertheless. About Munster she said: ‘If the undertakers don’t stop treating the Irish like they do, there’ll be trouble. There’s hatred there.’
He knew that already. Tut tut. After a few questions, he passed on to what interested him more, Connaught. What was the extent of O’Malley power? What sort of woman was her grandmother? Was her proposed submission genuine?
Again, Barbary was honest. ‘Grace O’Malley is no traitor. She’s an old woman out for herself and her people, she’s had to be.’ She found it difficult to communicate and encapsulate Grace’s non-patriotic, localised, self-interested, law-disregarding form of private enterprise, so she said: ‘As a matter of fact, the person she reminds me of is the queen.’
For a moment the carved smile on the face of the Elf went into something genuinely astonished and amused. Then he nodded and scratched another note. ‘Perhaps it would be as well not to draw the parallel when you meet Her Majesty. Now then, Mistress O’Malley’s fleet. How large would you say it was?’
She gave an estimate considerably less than the true size and added: ‘Smaller than it was before bloody Bingham attacked her.’
Ah, Bingham. She’d really got his interest now. ‘There’ll be no peace while Bingham rules Connaught,’ she said, and told him about the hanging of the three boys at Galway. ‘And the youngest was still protesting that he could read as he was hanged,’ she finished, wiping unfeigned tears from her eyes.
The Elf made another note.
She added: ‘And he holds the castles of Roscommon, Athlone and Carrick, all without warrant.’
‘That’s the way,’ Sir John Perrot had told her. ‘Hint at corruption. Connaught should be worth four thousand pounds a year to the Crown, and yields only one thousand. If the cheeseparing bitch thinks he’s withholding her dues she’ll have her teeth in his neck faster than a ferret.’
Every instance of Bingham’s butchery and self-seeking she’d ever heard about was scored into the wax. Through the big door to the anteroom she could hear the scratching of quills, and from the open window behind the Elf came the equally insistent splashing of fountains.
Cecil put down his stylus and bounced his fists up and down on the desktop, like a polite little boy showing enthusiasm for a present he was about to receive. ‘And the Earl of Tyrone?’
She’d known this was coming. ‘He wants to be a good Englishman and he wants to be a good Irishman, and neither side’ll let him be either.’ Cecil might as well know the situation; he was one of the few men in the world who had some influence on it. Besides, if he was intelligent, he knew it already.
‘Do you find yourself in that position, mistress?’
Crafty, he was a crafty little cove. She had to be credible, and if she swore unthinking loyalty to the Crown he’d know she wasn’t. ‘Just seems to me there’s something wrong when a man like Sir John Perrot’s recalled and a Bingham left at large,’ she said. ‘If peace is the object.’
‘Peace is the object,’ he said. Was there a moment of commitment there, reassurance? Perhaps, but she’d never really know. She’d noticed that during the interrogation he’d rarely, if ever, said ‘I’. Always the passive, ‘one might think… it could be said that…’ What Mr Secretary Cecil felt and thought was locked away inside a box in a guarded interior. The tidiness of his questioning, like the tidiness of the room, showed abhorrence of chaos. His peace wasn’t her peace. He wanted peace for Ireland because the alternative was too expensive, because cruelty exacerbated a dangerous situation. But it still made him a better ally than those to whom slaughter was the only solution.
He was opening a drawer in his desk. ‘Are you familiar with Sir John Perrot’s writing, mistress?’ She was. She’d received notes from him while she was staying with the Spensers and his signature had been on proclamations all over Dublin. ‘Then be so good as to look at this.’
He passed over a page from a letter. She had only to glance at it. ‘It’s a forgery.’
‘How do you know? It resembles his hand.’
‘I wasn’t taught to read and write by the best jackman in England for nothing.’
‘Jackman?’
‘Counterfeiter.’
He nodded as if she said she’d been taught needlework by her mother. ‘You should know,’ he said, ‘that Archbishop Loftus came to England last week expressly to give this letter to Her Majesty. It purports to be written by Sir John offering assistance to the King of Spain.’
‘Then it’s definitely a forgery.’
‘Nevertheless, it is to be feared that it will be used against him at his trial.’
‘There’ll be a trial?’
‘Her Majesty is intent on it.’
‘And you don’t want that?’ Commit yourself, you little bugger.
The Elf’s happy little face remained happy. ‘It may be that Sir John’s Irish policy, despite his, ah, indiscretions, has been less damaging than most. And it would be useful to his friends to know exactly where this letter originated. Perhaps with your connections…’
‘You want me to find out who forged it?’
‘Can you?’
‘I’ll try.’
A servant knocked and came in through the door to the scriveners’ room. ‘Her Majesty is taking leave of the Lord Treasurer, my lord.’ He went out.
The Elf produced a ring of keys and climbed down from behind his desk. He went to the secret door and unlocked it. ‘I’ll lead the way. Quickly, mistress, if you please.’
She followed him, reluctantly. ‘Mr Secretary, it’s really not a good idea…’ But at the bottom of the stairs he actually took her hand and limped her along the covered walk and through a gate halfway down into the confines of Burghley House, all lawns, fountains and courtyards, then into the house itself. The gallery was full of heralds, ladies-in-waiting, attendants. Cecil hirpled through the crowd, gesturing Barbary after him, until they were in another, quieter wing, panting outside double doors.
The doors opened. Cecil knelt. Barbary went into a deep curtsey and stayed in it. ‘Ah, little man,’ said a voice, ‘I have been administering calves’-foot jelly to your father. I have told him to be well. Even my Elf cannot replace my Spirit.’ She wanted to be the magician everybody told her she was, to put health back into the only man she’d ever been right to rely on with a command and a bowl of calves’-foot jelly.
Cecil was weeping and bobbing, calling her ‘Victrix orientis’, this year’s favoured address. Barbary, her eyes close to the queen’s long, narrow shoe, saw that the skin under the silk stocking was wrinkled like dry, ribbed sand. She dreaded the moment of recognition, if it came. In the years since they’d met, Elizabeth had come to be the focus of so much evil done in her name that in Barbary’s mind she had diminished into a cypher, sitting on her faraway throne like a virulent toad on a stone. But here, now, in her presence, the woman had more than absolute political power; her personality was so overriding that gaining its approval was all that mattered. Perhaps she’d forgotten. God, let her have forgotten.
She forgot nothing. ‘May I present Lady Betty…’ began Cecil.
‘We’ve put on petticoats now, have we, Mistress Boggart?’ The word was practically gobbed onto the floor. ‘Abandoned our lewd male attire? You dare to re-enter the presence you fouled with your dishonour? Take this… this thing away, Cecil. You have earned our displeasure for bringing it.’
The long shoe kicked Barbary’s skirt aside as it moved off, scraping her knee. Something happened to Barbary with th
at kick. Physically, the sting was nothing; mentally, it reacted into an indignation so overwhelming that she was helpless in its grip, not for Ireland, but for the child Barbary, and all children who scrabbled just to keep their noses above the sludge that underlay Elizabeth’s golden reign. The spasm of anger was so strong that Barbary shook from the terror of being unable to stop signing her own death warrant.
She stood up. ‘Do you know what it’s like?’ she said clearly to the retreating back. ‘Have you any idea what goes on in the back alleys of your precious city? Men like wild beasts on women? On little girls? Honour? I tell you, madam, if I hadn’t dressed like a boy I wouldn’t have had any honour. I survived as best I knew how.’
Cecil had closed his eyes in apparently happy prayer.
The queen turned round. She had a silver bowl and spoon in her hands. Barbary stood where she was. And she saw a woman who did know what it was like. Linenfold oak corridors had been the young Elizabeth’s back streets and she’d been hunted through them as viciously for the power she could give as any little girl lost in the Bermudas. Her eyes looked through Barbary to wild beasts who’d worn velvet and silk, then they focused.
‘Ireland didn’t improve your manners,’ she said mildly.
Barbary dropped then and crawled forward to hug the skinny ankles in true obeisance. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ And at that moment she was.
Cecil was skipping about them. The mention of Ireland had given him his cue. Lady Betty had done sterling work in that country… carried out the instructions Burghley had given her to the letter… bringing in Grace O’Malley, pacifying the pirate… reconciliation… loyalty to the Crown. ‘Nor do I mistake me if I see her influence in the Earl of Tyrone’s bringing in of the O’Donnell.’
The Pirate Queen Page 50