Shadow of the Axe (The Queen's Intelligencer Book 1)

by Peter Tonkin

  Poley knew every gaol in London and a number close-to in the nearby countryside. They were all run for profit and the Fleet was no different. Whether Warden Tyrell was presently within the walls or not, the men to whom he had sold the list of gaolers’ rights would be. It would cost Poley a sum to be welcomed into the place. His ability to pay would govern the assignation of his cell, the availability of comforts like a chamber pot, water and a cloth; access via friends – when they came aware of his predicament – to clean clothing; to warm clothing. And – tomorrow – food. He would have to pay to have his leg irons put on unless he wanted them so tight he risked losing his feet. He would have to pay to have them taken off or foul himself further with the bucket out of reach.

  But Belsavage Yard was a busy commercial hub. Prisoners who could afford it were permitted to have rooms outside the main prison building, mostly on the far side of the Yard which therefore teemed with men and women keen to supply their wants. The place was noisy with the shouts of costermongers selling hot food and good ale, girls selling cherries and Seville oranges, and women selling themselves. The air was heavy with the aromas generated by all of this together with clouds of tobacco smoke and – occasionally – the eyewatering stench of sewage blown in from the Fleet River. For those less fortunate, less financially secure – like those reliant on the Earl of Essex’s bounty, for instance – there were plenty of brokers waiting for those willing to pawn their possessions for ready money. And, of course, there were the outright moneylenders. The first of these that Poley spotted as he was escorted into the Yard was John Wolfall.

  It was almost as though the loan shark had been waiting for Poley to arrive. No sooner was the prisoner pushed into the Yard than Wolfall was at his side. ‘You’ll need ready money,’ he said, paying no attention to the prisoner’s taciturn escort. ‘I can offer a line of credit may make things easier for you within, Master Poley.’ He held up a purse that looked suspiciously like Poley’s missing one. ‘Two pounds to start with. Forty silver shillings. What say you? At a bargain for an old friend, costing only one pound extra.’ He jingled the purse once more. ‘Three pounds signed for and they’re yours Master Poley.’ The purse vanished and a paper contract appeared together with an inked quill to sign it with. Poley paused and the escorts let him. He took the agreement and signed it, all too well aware that he had no alternative. Wolfall waved the ink dry as he followed Poley towards the prison’s main entrance and he handed the purse over at the last possible moment. At least the weight felt right, thought Poley as he climbed the broad steps and was ushered through the great door into the cavernous reception hall, for there was of course no time – and this was no place – to count it.

  *

  His cloak-wrapped escorts stood one at each shoulder as Poley paused at the table to be signed in. The book-keeper was one of the few within these walls who could read and write, thought Poley as he answered the gruff questions then watched his name and address in Hog Lane being recorded. The page of the leger in front of him was marked with five columns, each with a clear purpose in the keeping of records – personal and financial. The information he had just given went into the first two; the date and time of his arrival were recorded in the third column beside name and address. In the fourth would be recorded the date and time of departure and on occasion, the nature of that departure. More than one entry in this column was marked D for ‘deceased’. Others were marked religiously, with any outstanding sum owed. Too great a sum outstanding, of course, meant simple movement from the criminal and political section of the prison to the debtors’ section. The great, long room where those without friends or finances were held. A room which stood beneath a grille looking out onto the street through which the destitute could beg. Then there was a final column where the level of accommodation would be noted as defined by its daily rate.

  Poley had no idea how long he was likely to be here but he was confident that if his funds ran low he could call on Wolfall for more. For a shilling, 12 pence, a day he could share a fairly clean cell with three others, one bucket and light leg irons. For two groats or eight pence, it would be with seven others and the straw would not be so clean, the irons would be heavier and the bucket further away but no bigger. Below sixpence and below a fourpenny groat, things began to get really grim. As the clerk’s quill hovered enquiringly over the last column, therefore, Poley said, ‘A shilling.’ His fingers slipped into the purse Wolfall had passed to him and he pulled out a silver coin. The clerk took it, glanced at it and bit it. ‘That’s an Irish shilling,’ he said, with a sneer that seemed to say you can’t hoodwink me, cully. ‘You’ll be lucky to get more than a couple of groats for those in here. Turnkey! Here’s another guest needs leading to his bed. The two groat cell it is!’

  As the turnkey led him down towards the cells, lantern held high and bunch of iron keys in a great ring jangling at his hip, Poley was distracted from any thoughts of the wider situation by simple outrage at the manner in which Wolfall had gulled him – as though he was the most innocent virgin coney fresh up from the country. Not only had he been fooled into paying three pounds for two pounds in silver shillings, he now discovered that the shillings themselves were worth two groats – eight pence – instead of twelve. He had promised to pay back three pounds or sixty shillings. And for that promised outlay he had actually received forty Irish shillings, worth less than half of what he had paid out instead of the two-thirds value he had been promised. He was still planning his revenge on the devious moneylender when the turnkey stopped at the door of a cell. ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘The two groat. You look like a cove who can write.’

  ‘I can write,’ confirmed Poley.

  The turnkey reached up and removed a writing tablet such as a schoolboy might use. It was backed with wood and faced with wax on which a series of marks had been inscribed. ‘Here,’ said the turnkey, handing the writing tablet and a metal stylus to Poley. ‘Write the first letter of you name and your number alongside of it.’

  ‘P’ said Poley, showing the letter to the turnkey. ‘And my number?’

  ‘Six. You’ll be P6 as long as you’re here and I’ll keep a tally of petty charges until they adds up to some coin worth having. Then you pays up or you goes on my debtors list. And I strongly recommend you stays off of my debtors list.’ He replaced the tablet on the wall and sorted through the keys as he continued to speak. ‘You’re late. So no victuals tonight nor drink. If you need the bucket be quick about it and then I’ll bed you down. You’ll learn the routines and the charges fast enough in the morning. At least you can sleep sound. Your cell’s not too crowded and none of the others can reach you. Chains is too short, see?’

  The door creaked open and Poley followed the lantern into the cavernous darkness.

  In spite of the turnkey’s cheery assurances, he did not think he was going to sleep soundly at all. But as things turned out, he was wrong. Use of the bucket relieved a good deal of personal pressure. The gyves round his ankle were not too tight and, as the turnkey had promised, there was an empty space between himself and his nearest companion. The aching in his head and the nausea which had accompanied it eased. The straw was cleaner and thicker than he had feared it would be. His situation was nothing like comfortable and the cell was nowhere near warm. But as he lay on his back with extra straw piled to support his damaged cranium as best as could be, he was able to see through the slits in the walls – the closest they had to windows. There was a full moon hanging low in a jewelled sky and he was staring mindlessly at this when exhaustion finally claimed him.

  *

  Poley was awakened next morning not only by the sunshine streaming through the slit of the window but also by the arrival of a new companion. The turnkey led a frightened, confused-looking man to the empty space beside the battered intelligencer. Like Poley, the new man showed every sign of having been held for some time elsewhere and in accommodation even less salubrious than this. ‘You’re C5,’ the turnkey was informing the new arrival
as he settled him into his place and put the hoop of iron round his ankle, chaining him to the wall. ‘Your tab stands at two groats owed already. A bad start. You should have accepted what the money lenders offered out in Belsavage Yard. Just to tide you over ‘til your family and friends can organise some aid. Always assuming you have either and if you do, that whatever they send makes it past them out at the front whose task it is to read letters and open parcels and so-forth.’ The new prisoner gaped up at him, clearly overwhelmed by what was happening. Blissfully unaware, the turnkey continued, ‘There’s a limit, you realise, on how large I let the tab run up before I either ask to have you transferred or simply stop being of service to you’.

  ‘Transferred?’ quavered the newcomer, clearly far beyond any concept of how terrible his existence would become if the turnkey simply left him to rot alive untended. ‘Whither?’

  ‘Down to a cell as seems more suited to your circumstances. Or over to the debtors’ cell. Then you can beg through the grill and hope for the charity of passing strangers. Though in my experience such charity runs pretty thin, even on the Sabbath.’

  He straightened, looked around. ‘Now,’ he said, broadening his remarks to his captive audience of eight chained men. ‘The first charge in the morning usually concerns the bucket. Who’ll be the first to spend a penny?’

  He stepped out through the cell door and retrieved his record tablets, then he organised the prisoners by letter and number into the order they would be unshackled for a penny, use the bucket at yet more charge and be shackled back in place, gratis. As he did this, Poley noted that the key-ring on one hip, a lethal enough weapon in itself, was balanced by a sizeable club on the other. He also noted that his companions in misery spoke only to the gaoler. Not to each other. Not to each other yet, perhaps. But then, looking around the cell rather than at the latest man labouring over the bucket, Poley noted the air of tense suspicion. None of the others, it seemed, trusted any of the men they were surrounded by. Probably with good reason. There were agents provocateur, as the French had it, everywhere. Which, thought the battered intelligencer, was interesting. Because he thought he recognised his new companion in misery. Knew the face; certainly felt he recognised the voice. The accent. The tone. But he just couldn’t quite put his finger on the man’s identity.

  ‘Now,’ announced the turnkey, distractingly, when the last man was back in place. ‘The next order of business concerns victuals. Nothing fancy,’ he said pointedly to C5. ‘Simple bread and ale. Part of a loaf fresh from the bakery outside and some ale from the barrel men in Belsavage Yard. One loaf. One flagon. Shared by those as can pay. And in the matter of consumables, the custom of the country is money up front.’ He looked directly at Poley, then at his new companion. ‘And any overpayment set against the next meal, for those rich in shillings but poor in groats and pence.’

  The other six inmates wearily reached into purses and wallets. Poley did the same. His belly was rumbling. It was a full day since he had eaten and what little had been left in his lean belly was in the straw on the floor of the Newgate cell. Bread and ale sounded like manna from on high to him. But then his attention was attracted by his companion once again.

  ‘Have mercy!’ cried C5. ‘I have no coin nor access to any as yet. I have been held for more than a day before my arrival here. And my belly is as empty as my purse!’ Seven pairs of eyes regarded him with no sympathy whatsoever.

  ‘No coin, no victuals,’ said the turnkey. ‘Now who’s got a groat for their breakfast?’

  Everyone had, with only that one exception. But as the turnkey came to collect Poley’s Irish shilling, the intelligencer said, quietly, ‘Feed one more at my charge. For today at least.’

  The turnkey stopped and looked askance at him. ‘You’re not some Jesuit balancing charitable works with plans to kill the Queen, Heaven defend her, are you?’

  ‘No,’ said Poley. ‘I’m no Jesuit. But I’ll not see a man go hungry if I can help it.’

  ‘Only until my friends find out what has happened to me,’ said C5 gratefully. ‘They will see me out of here in no time I am certain. And pay for my welfare in the interim. And they will repay you, I promise. Who may I name as my kind friend and benefactor?’

  ‘Robert Poley,’ said Poley.

  ‘Well met, Master Poley,’ said C5. ‘I am Henry Cuffe, Secretary to the Earl of Essex.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Poley softly, as the light of understanding began to dawn.

  3

  Sharing his Irish shillings with Henry Cuffe meant that Poley’s funds began to run low on the morning of the third day. It also seemingly made him a friend for life. He and Cuffe were chained side by side at the end of the cell near the slit-window. They were as far from their companions in misfortune as the size of the place allowed. And they were further isolated by the positioning of the slop-bucket, which hid them – at least partially – from the others sitting on the straw-strewn stone-slab floor. Every afternoon, one of the prisoners was unshackled and made to carry the reeking vessel out to be emptied into the Fleet river which flowed by the prison. When they returned it, empty, it was always to the same place. So Cuffe and Poley found it easy enough to exchange whispered conversations without being overheard.

  They talked incessantly during the waking hours when they were together, except only for those periods at dawn and dusk which they filled with silent reflection and prayer. During those times, Poley would slip a rosary out of the breast of his doublet and finger it as surreptitiously as possible. This covert activity was something Cuffe pretended not to notice as he too muttered his prayers, hands clasped reverently in front of him. At all other times, Cuffe was by far the more voluble, probably as a result of finding himself utterly out of his depth in a nightmare he had never dreamed he would have to suffer. His situation, as described to Poley, seemed to be compounded by the fact that he had no idea what he had done to warrant being taken up by the constable as he visited the bookstalls in St Paul’s churchyard. Or why he had been hauled before Justice Hall, unable to defend himself against a charge he did not understand. How in the name of Heaven he had been convicted out of hand, then sentenced without being able to alert his friends. And, finally, why he had been condemned to spend some unspecified time in the Fleet with no-one apparently any the wiser. Though, thought Poley feelingly, Cuffe’s unfettered volubility might also have been designed to distract him from the pain in his backside from sitting on a cold stone floor hour after hour. The intelligencer was fortunate in that both his doublet and breeches were well padded, even though parts of them were soiled and still damp.

  Poley observed all this from a mental distance, as coldly and purposefully as the manner in which he had fingered the rosary, reading much into the fact that Cuffe made no remark and no report that he had done so. Cuffe’s failure to react to the rosary and his all-too anxious conversation were traits he had seen before, and made good use of, when the situation dictated. At almost any time during the last ten years or more, Poley could have been found in one of London’s jails, chained beside men suspected of holding treasonable views, showing them his rosary, holding calculatedly treasonous conversations with them, listening as they unconsciously confessed, unaware that every word was going to be reported to the Council. That each guilty syllable was carrying them closer to Rackmaster Topcliffe at the Tower or the Three Legged Mare at Tyburn. The simple fact which ruled Poley’s world and actions was that men like these had planned in the past - and would in the future as the Council feared – to remove the occupant of the English throne by fair means or foul. Given liberty to do so thirty years earlier by Pope Pius V’s Regnans in Excelsis bull which excommunicated the young queen and promised absolution to anyone who murdered her. Absolution and a place in heaven, in fact. As long as such men continued with their lethal plots, the Queen’s life was in danger; and only men like Poley stood to guard her. In ways that even the Captain of the Queen’s Guard could not conceive of.

  Automatically, almost unconsci
ously, the intelligencer now replied to Cuffe’s loquacious confusion with ready sympathy, as convincing as it was shallow. He answered Cuffe’s questions with vague revelations about his own background and beliefs which were close enough to the truth to be plausible and to elicit further revelations from his companion. Consequently, Cuffe duly revealed all about his childhood in Somerset; his preferment by various noble families near his childhood home; his years at Oxford and his work with the Earl of Essex. He chatted about his experiences in Ireland, in the field with the army, in Dublin Castle and in Essex House with the Earl. About the Earl’s current household and the important figures within it.

  ‘I have often wondered,’ lied Poley on the morning of the second day, ‘how great houses such as those you are familiar with, Master Cuffe, are organised. I have sometimes seen great lords and ladies at a distance and thought to myself I’m sure I could find employment in their establishments if only I knew how such things were organised, for I am not without some talents.’

  ‘Well,’ Cuffe answered eagerly enough, ‘I cannot speak for the generality of great houses, but I know the Earl of Essex’s well enough…’

  ‘Anything you could tell me would be most welcome! As welcome, I dare say, as that breakfast bread must be to your empty belly…’

  ‘Of course.’ Cuffe chewed ruminatively as he took Poley’s point. It was Poley who had paid for the bread. A little information seemed a fair recompense

  *

  ‘Lady Frances oversees the day-to day domestic matters in Essex House, the cooks, servants and so forth with the help of Fitzherbert the major domo and the housekeeper his wife and his son Tom who is the Earl’s page. Fitzherbert is the man to approach if your ambitions lie in those areas, because Lady Frances was recently delivered of a baby girl and is busy with the child. She remains fiercely loyal to my Lord of Essex, of course, despite the fact he has not yet even seen the child. Furthermore, her loyalty to her Lord has led Lady Frances to attend court almost daily, usually dressed in mourning, as she pleads the case of her husband as though he is dead to the world as well as to his Queen. Often carrying the babe into the bargain. During Lady Frances’ confinement and occasional absences, the Earl’s mother, Lady Lettice, Countess of Leicester, takes charge - as well she might as wife to Sir Christopher Blount who, with Sir Gelly Meyrick, stands in charge of the wider household in any case. To be fair, though,’ admitted Cuffe, ‘Lady Frances or Lady Lettice would have been in charge of domestic elements even had the Earl been at home instead of incarcerated with Lord Keeper Edgerton in York House.’