‘You’re so good with all the plants and your herbs, why don’t you do that full time? Instead of the photojournalism where you don’t know when you’ll get your next pay packet. And it must be dangerous, constantly driving around in that van and often in risky situations. It would be far safer.’
Mathilde was looking down at her shoes, picking at the rubber sole that was beginning to part company with the upper section. They wouldn’t last the summer, that was for sure.
‘Sometimes I imagine what it would be like. To be able to walk out of my home and tend my plants every day. They would always be here, waiting for me. Something permanent and unmoving.’
‘Is that why you enjoy growing things? Because they put down roots?’
‘No. I don’t know. Maybe? I just like plants and gardens; they’re calm, peaceful. And they stay in one place. But now I don’t know if I’ve left it too late.’
As they’d been talking she was aware of the closeness of Oliver’s body, the heat that was emanating from him. She turned from the patch of wild mint she’d been tugging leaves from to release its pungent smell and realised that his face, turned towards her, was only inches from her own. She let out a small sigh as he leant in further and kissed her, his lips firm and cool against hers. It felt the most natural thing in the world.
Chapter Forty-Five
February 1586
As Tom’s home life slipped into a comfortable routine and a calm settled over him he began to worry more about the other side of his days, the secretive part. His reprieve from spying had been short lived. He’d only told Isabel the bare essentials, deciding it was better not to explain what he was having to do. He didn’t want her to worry about a thing and he chose to leave large tracts of information out when he told her about his day. But more frequently he was being despatched to watch various individuals around London, in dark corners and furtive places, and to deliver coded letters for Phelippes. The sorts of environments he wouldn’t choose to visit, places where a stranger could get their throat cut just for being exactly that, someone who didn’t fit in, who wasn’t a local.
He wasn’t surprised when yet again he was summoned by Walsingham. This time however he was told to go downriver to his home at Mortlake, Barn Elms.
As the wherry slowly made its way downriver the weak winter sun was shining but it gave out no warmth, sharing the dusky blue sky with the pale moon hanging above him as if reluctant to leave, like the last guest at a party. The cold drifted off the Thames to curl its fingers through skin and slide into bones, an unwelcome visitor. The alehouses sitting along the banks of the river to attract the trade of the numerous ships moored there had tall columns of smoke climbing into the sky. When Tom breathed out he could see his breath condense into tiny clouds before clinging in damp droplets to his beard. He tucked himself into the bow of the craft to avoid any of the splashes from the oars and was pleased when they finally arrived at the jetty where he could alight.
Two guards were waiting as he arrived, barring his way until he showed them the letter demanding his presence. One of them said something to him but turned his face away as he spoke and Tom missed what was said. It must have been a question as they both stared at him waiting for a reply. Wearily and getting colder by the minute Tom went through his signing to indicate his lack of hearing and then watched as one of them said to the other ‘what does the master want with a fool like him?’
Standing as tall as he could and knowing his blue coat gave him the cloak of respect that his apothecary clothing did not – remembering what Marlowe had told him about his clothes making him more confident – he pointed towards the house and marched past them, leaving them to hurry in his wake. He could see their long shadows laid across the lawns still white with frost as they scurried behind him.
He couldn’t turn around to see the guards’ faces as he was welcomed into the house but he hoped their snide expressions had been wiped off as they resumed their post standing in the freezing cold beside the river. To make a point he hurried over to the fire in the cavernous hall he’d stepped into and held his hands out to the warmth, rubbing them together as he did so. Now who was smirking?
He followed the steward through another large hall with a long table bordered by benches and wooden chairs, heraldic insignia and carvings of flowers and vine leaves decorating the top of the wainscotting, the ceiling covered in decorative plasterwork and into the next room where Walsingham sat at a desk even bigger than the one he used at the palace. Just for once he didn’t continue what he was doing and waved Tom to one of two chairs in front of the desk. The other was already occupied by a young man dressed in a thick, deep green velvet doublet, a rim of ermine showing around the ruff at his neck. He smiled and nodded at Tom and mouthed ‘hello’ to him. Tom smiled and dipped his head, slipping into the chair beside him.
‘Tom, this man is Nicholas Berden. He is an intelligencer for me but he is also a spy for Queen Mary. He is what we call a double spy. They think he is carrying letters from her to the ambassador in France but actually he brings them to me to be copied before they continue. And again, letters going to the Queen are copied and read by us before she gets them. Do you understand?’
Tom nodded slowly. He already knew letters written in code were intercepted, because he’d been working on those with both Phelippes and Bright, coding, shorthand, invisible ink. And it seemed this Berden was a messenger for both sides but only Walsingham knew it. He raised his eyebrows waiting to find out why he’d been summoned.
‘Berden is going to meet a gentleman I need you to watch carefully. He is called Anthony Babington. We believe he is involved in another of the treacherous plots to kill our Queen and put the papist Queen Mary on the throne. We need to stop these gentlemen, these heretics, and you are going to help. You are our secret weapon. Berden will introduce you as a friend and hopefully they will believe you cannot understand what they are saying. You are to go with him now to Babington’s lodgings where he and some of his fellow conspirators are meeting this afternoon.’ He passed a purse across to Tom who weighed it in his hand. There were several heavy coins inside, this wasn’t a few groats to pay the boatman or to buy ale. Whatever Walsingham was relying on him to learn was worth a lot to him. It also, Tom suspected, correlated directly with the amount of danger he was about to be placed in: blood money.
They arrived at the lodgings in Bishopsgate, where Babington’s wife greeted them. It was a smart home; not what Tom had expected from Walsingham’s unkind description of the household. The outside of the house had plaster pargetting, a decorative relief beneath the eaves, and the wooden framed oriel window was supported with carved horses. A young daughter peeped from behind her mother’s skirts and Tom felt his heart give a lurch. If what Walsingham said was true then these two people would see the man they loved in mortal danger and they could end up homeless. He wanted to warn her but for once his inability to speak saved him from his morals.
In an inner chamber a group of seven men sat in a circle. They greeted their friend jovially with slaps on his back and passed him a cup of ale but they all looked warily at Tom and no greetings were proffered to him. Berden turned Tom around towards him so that he could see what was being said and introduced him, explaining they were close friends from France and that he was Catholic, whilst carefully making a big deal of Tom’s lack of hearing and speech. Assuring them he didn’t know about the conspiracy nor had any way of discovering it.
After this presentation the other men were happy to smile and nod in an exaggerated manner passing him a cup of ale and showing him to a chair, miming that he should sit down. Tom had trouble keeping his face straight with them behaving as if he were the village idiot. If only they knew.
The men immediately launched into a description of their plot. Tom was sitting in their circle but still missed parts as people all spoke at the same time and some faces were obscured. Nevertheless, he did gather they were getting letters from France and moving them onwards to Queen Mary by
concealing them in the many barrels of beer delivered almost daily to Chartley Castle, where she was incarcerated. This was being arranged by one Thomas Morgan, orchestrated from where he was currently residing in a Paris gaol. The idea of the barrels was, the group considered, an inspiration and the brewer who’d only been referred to an ‘an honest man’ would surely have a place at Mary’s court when she was finally on the throne; when the Catholic faith would reign once more and the country would be returned to Rome’s loving arms.
Tom’s thoughts on religion were cursory. He’d always found the experience of church tedious, unable to hear anything and the stone floor cold and hard beneath his knees. The stained-glass windows in France were a pleasant diversion, especially when the sun was shining through them making a rainbow of patterns on the floor. He used to hold his arm out hoping the colours would filter through onto his skin. It was magical to a small boy, as if God were reaching out to him. But as he got older his fascination waned and now he had no interest in something he couldn’t participate in.
As a child he’d followed the Catholic church because it was his mother’s faith and they’d attended mass daily at the monastery in the village where they settled. When the former king, Henry VIII, had closed the monasteries in England his mother had secretly helped her friend the Prior leave for France and when she had later needed help in making her own escape, her friends were able to assist her. The irony that he was now supporting the Queen in keeping the Catholics out of the country wasn’t lost on him.
Tom remembered Walsingham had explained the importance of committing each of the men’s faces to memory so he could recognise them anywhere. Sitting in his own world and not required to contribute he looked around the group and studied each of them, their mannerisms and their physical shape. He was quite certain he’d be able to pick them out in a crowd instantly. Babington flicked the hair away from his face for about the hundredth time and Tom smiled to himself. People didn’t realise all the small gestures they performed a dozen times an hour. Another of the men, who he’d seen Berden call Robert Pooley, held his arms out nervously, stretching his fingertips together with unfailing regularity. On their journey to the house Berden had explained that Pooley was also one of Walsingham’s double spies, living on a knife edge of fear that he would be revealed.
Sitting in the stuffy warmth following an early start to the day, Tom felt his eyes start to close, but eventually his comrade got to his feet and pointed to the door and he followed. The other gentlemen also got to their feet and bowed slightly while Tom was able to get one final good look at their faces in the firelight as they said their goodbyes. He kept his face blank in apparent non comprehension.
Once out on the street, his companion took his upper arm and walked him briskly away from the house as if he was about to turn tail and run. Berden’s fingers were digging into his flesh as they dipped off the street and into an alley and he was finally set free, rubbing his painful arm. They carried on walking and Tom was only too pleased to keep moving, a stench of rotting vegetables and flesh rising up around them. The ground was slippery underfoot but he couldn’t bear to look down and see what he was walking in as he tripped on a loose cobble and almost fell. He was relieved to reach the other end which opened onto the wider and brighter Threadneedle Street. In front of him stood the magnificent Merchant Taylors’ Hall, the home of the Company of Merchant Taylors in all its majesty, the chapel for its members attached to one end. The two men turned to head down Cornhill towards Poultry Corner. Tom shuddered at the memory of that place.
‘Sorry for dragging you away,’ his accomplice apologised, ‘I wanted to make sure those men were totally taken in with the idea that you have no idea of what is happening around you. We played it very well there; they think you’re just a messenger who can be given an address and will have no idea of what you are carrying. The idiots. They won’t realise their mistake until they are cut down from a rope to watch their own entrails being ripped out.’
Tom smiled and nodded although he felt his stomach turn over. Seeing Throckmorton hanged and later having to sit through Hugh explaining in pictures the horrific executions of other enemies of the Queen, cut from the hangman’s rope before they were dead and eviscerated in front of the crowds, had convinced him he was not cut out for the blood and gore of a public execution. Walsingham was single minded in his quest to eradicate all of those who were not loyal to Her Majesty and he was intent on ensuring that those who displeased him realised the horror of the punishment.
The two men parted ways at Blackfriars. Tom had no idea where Berden was going next and he was thankful he couldn’t ask him.
‘Now you’ve met the key players,’ he was reminded, ‘and we believe the stage is almost set. You can expect to be asked to perform any number of tasks until the plotters are all rounded up and Queen Mary is where she belongs. In hell.’ Turning, Berden disappeared into the melee of people bustling about the quay, leaving Tom wondering if he’d misinterpreted the last part of what he’d been told. Whatever he was now caught up in was larger, much larger, than anything he’d been involved in so far.
Chapter Forty-Six
March 1586
Tom’s stomach growled and he put his palm on it feeling the rumble against his hand. He’d never enjoyed Lent and its fasting, the monotonous meals of pottage or fish, and he ended up barely eating as he waited fervently for Easter. It was the one day when he didn’t mind sitting in a cold church because the recompense was a huge dinner with dish after dish of delicious roasted meats dripping with grease, bowls of custards and marchpane cakes. He hadn’t lost the sweet tooth of his childhood and if he hadn’t devised an effective remedy for sleeplessness, he wouldn’t have ended up where he was. It had started the chain of actions which now brought him to Temple Bar on the western fringe of the city, hovering outside the Plough Inn and waiting for another of Walsingham’s men, Bernard Maude. He’d never met this man but apparently he would know who Tom was by looking out for a man in a blue coat whose eyes flitted around all the time, watching and taking in all that was happening.
He knew when Maude was approaching, even though he hadn’t appeared in front of Tom. He could tell by the way that others moved out of the way of someone walking towards them, the shadows on the ground shifting and swirling and at the last minute he turned and plastered a wide smile on his face. If this accomplice thought he could outwit the deaf man he had a lot to learn.
Tom was rewarded with a surprised look on the tall man’s face before he broke into a grin to match Tom’s own and they bowed to each other in acknowledgement of an instant rapport. Maude took Tom’s arm and pulled him to the entrance of a nearby alley where nobody was passing. The light was falling fast and Tom had to stand closer to see what was being relayed as he explained who they’d be watching that evening. Walsingham had previously explained that Maude was another ‘double spy’ so the men inside the inn were expecting him, thinking he was part of Babington’s plot. Tom was to enter a few minutes after Maude and stand somewhere in the tavern where he could watch what was happening and read anything said between the group that may otherwise be missed. It would be noisy inside and it was easy to miss any undercurrents or suspicions but Tom could pick them all up.
Leaving him in the shadows Maude disappeared through the tavern doors and Tom did as he was bid and waited a few minutes before following him. Inside for him the room was as silent as everywhere else always was but he could see it was a normal evening, the abstinence of Lent didn’t extend to meeting friends or drinking beer.
Tom scanned the heaving room before spotting his prey at a table close to the fire. He immediately recognised one of them, a man of limited height and a round stomach topped with a florid face, as the man he’d watched on his very first assignment when a package had been handed over in the back yard of The Magpie. Walsingham had previously explained to Tom that they now knew John Ballard was one of the key instigators of the conspiracy. A lynch pin, the sort of man who will slid
e away into the darkness if – nay when – they were brought to justice. While the lambs were brought to the slaughter, being taken to Tyburn in the back of a cart, the likes of Ballard would be on a small rowing boat halfway to the continent given half a chance.
The three men were eating bowls of oyster stew; Tom could smell the savoury aroma floating its way on the steam and his stomach rumbled again. It was hard to watch their mouths as they talked and ate at the same time, droplets of gravy dripping out and onto their beards. Together with the constant wiping of chins with cloths it didn’t help Tom trying to read what was being said. However, at one point after several flagons of ale, Maude had no choice but to visit the garderobe and relieve himself, leaving the two collaborators on their own. Tom sipped his beer slowly as he watched them put their spoons down and dip their heads closer. He had to move his position slightly so he could still see Ballard but that meant he couldn’t watch his accomplice at the same time. He had to make a choice of who to watch, but thankfully it appeared he’d chosen well.
‘I will be going to France within the next couple of weeks. I need you to deliver some letters to Chartley for me. Come to my house tomorrow and I will give them to you. Do not tell anyone of what you are doing. Maude and I will travel together to meet other sympathisers of the Catholic cause in Rouen and Paris, and we are hoping to gain final agreement from the French and Spanish to raise armies, ready to strike at the same time that our plans come to fruition.’
At that point Maude returned and sat down. Tom wasn’t sure if he knew everything arranged for this visit to France, assuming he even knew it was happening, but at least he could inform his accomplice and Walsingham of the bigger picture. Whatever these men were planning it was going to be catastrophic unless it could be stopped. It slowly dawned on Tom that he was a key player in the machinery Walsingham was operating and his role was far from over yet. The quiet family life he so loved was going to be sporadic for several months if things continued as they were.
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