by Peter Tonkin
So it was Sir Francis who brought the astonishing news: the Earl was now restored to full health. Lord Keeper Edgerton had confirmed the near-miracle. And therefore Her Majesty would allow the Earl to return home. Soon. The information galvanised every element of Essex House. Lady Frances stopped visiting Whitehall to beat upon the doors fast closed against her. She and Lady Lettice spent time with the Fitzherberts instead, ensuring that Earl Robert would be presented with Essex House at its most glittering, warm and welcoming when he returned to the safety of his home and the bosom of his family.
*
Then Essex’s closest friend and associate, the Earl of Southampton arrived with his recently married Lady Elizabeth and a small retinue from their London home Southampton House and set to work alongside Lady Frances and the Fitzherberts. To begin with, their arrival made little difference but after a while, Poley began to catch glimpses of Henry Wriothesley watching him in unguarded moments. The unease arising from that was compounded when he saw Southampton cloistered with Gelly Meyrick. It looked as though there were yet more enemies moving south out of Southampton House, via Drury House and congregating in Essex House. Lady Penelope and Lady Dorothy arrived to offer their aid and to join in the general excitement. Lady Janet also arrived in Lady Dorothy’s train. She was much more closely related to Henry Percy the Earl of Northumberland after all than Poley was to Sir Christopher Blount. But she did not add to the excitement. Instead of plans for the future, she brought a warning. Warning of a danger that Poley was growing increasingly uneasy about; a warning presented in such a manner that it deflated all the excitement he had felt on seeing her after so long.
‘There is a chance,’ said Lady Janet as they met, apparently by accident, in the corridor leading to Sir Anthony’s sick room. ‘More than a chance, that you have been left unmolested only because you present no serious danger while the Earl is held in York House. But now that he is to be returned to Essex House, you may well present a very real threat. One that must be countered at all costs.’
‘I am alive to the possibility, Lady Janet…’ he explained.
‘And what are you prepared to do about it?’ she wondered softly, her tone and expression full of genuine concern.
In fact there was little Poley could do about it other than to keep the most careful watch. He got more of an opportunity to do this because his work began to tail off as everyone waited for the Earl to come and direct their efforts in person.
But his increasing idleness brought about more reason for him to keep a weather eye out. Fewer letters meant fewer reasons for Gelly Meyrick and his associates to be abroad. They gathered in Essex House generating an increasingly intense air of dangerous hilarity as they waited. Observing them, Poley cynically calculated that they were doing as much as they could to restore the Earl’s fortune by drinking vast quantities of sweet wine. Had he held the monopoly on all wines instead of just the sweet ones, his men might have drunk him into a fortune. Except for the fact that it was all his wine they were consuming and only he was paying for it. Or, rather, promising to pay for it. Lady Frances, erring as ever on the side of her husband’s fabled generosity, did nothing to stop them; nor did Lady Lettice, nor did the Southamptons, both of whom simply joined in the burgeoning overconsumption. After a while it became obvious that Fitzherbert and his men were encountering increasing difficulty in finding butchers, bakers and - especially - vintners willing to extend yet more credit. Fired by anticipation, alcohol and idleness, Meyrick and his men became increasingly dangerous to the servants, to each other and, finally to Poley.
Poley had seen to the strengthening of the bolt on his bedroom door but nevertheless returned to his original habit of sleeping almost fully dressed. And nowadays, a workmanlike rapier with its fine Solingen blade kept his daggers company on his bedside table. Even so, when they came for him just before dawn a week after Sir Francis had brought the news, they were able to take him relatively easily. It was a mixture of the soldiers, the secretaries, and, from the appearance of some unfamiliar faces, the Earl of Southampton’s men as well. Their expressions were set and grim, their expressions clearly boding no good for their captive as they gagged him, bound him, bundled him out of his room and down the stairs. At least there was no sign of Cuffe amongst them, Poley observed, which was pleasing. Nor were Sir Henry Wotton, Sir Christopher Blount, Sir Francis Bacon or Southampton himself. It was another positive sign, thought Poley, that he was shoved past Sir Anthony’s sickroom and into one of the store rooms overlooking the garden. It was a pokey, low-ceilinged place whose dirty leaded window gave little light as dawn was only just beginning to arrive. There was nothing remarkable about it other than the beams in it ceiling and the chair at its centre. Poley and his captors pushed in first. The rest of their companions crowded after them.
Then any positive aspects to the experience were soon overwhelmed by painfully negative ones. Meyrick was inquisitor in chief. Gerrard and St Lawrence played the part of Rackmaster Topcliffe’s torturers. Instead of a rack, they dumped him in the chair and lashed him securely to it, tying his hands behind his back and running a rope round his waist before securing his ankles to the chair’s front legs. The chair was solid. Once the ropes were tight, he had no chance of working them loose, let alone pulling them free. It was also quite heavy – so that no matter how hard they punched him, it did little more than rock back and forth.
*
They settled into a kind of rhythm so that one punch sent him rocking back and then he was met by the next as he came rocking forward once again. The only sounds in the crowded chamber were the smacks of fists hitting flesh and the grunts of impact; the squeak and tap of the chair legs lifting and settling rhythmically on the floorboards. There were no questions to begin with. Gerrard and St Lawrence simply started beating him while Meyrick leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching in apparent boredom while the others clustered in the doorway behind him like the audience at a bear-baiting. The technique was well thought through, Poley admitted, and his torturers made up in enthusiasm for what they lacked in experience or expertise. But the intelligencer had been through this kind of thing before and knew a trick or two to help him survive. He tucked his chin hard down against his chest and met the rain of blows with his forehead and crown, preserving his eyes – if not his eyebrows – his nose and his teeth as much as possible. Fortunately, all the most recent damage to his skull had been at the back, well clear of his interrogators’ fists.
As time passed, it began to dawn on the two inquisitors that their fists were actually sustaining more damage than Poley’s face. In their initial enthusiasm, neither had thought to wear gloves, which would have stopped the skin on their knuckles from splitting. Nor, it seemed, had it occurred to any of them that a club would be a useful addition to their equipment until long after the bones behind the split knuckles began to crack as their fingers started to swell. Meyrick, too, seemed to have little understanding of the true state of affairs. When he pulled Poley’s battered face up to look at it in the grey dawn light, he seemed to have no idea that almost all of the blood spattered so impressively across it did not actually belong to Poley at all.
He undid the gag and pulled it free. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Where shall we begin?’
Poley forbore to point out that they had actually begun a good deal earlier, a fact to which his face bore mute witness. He had no desire at this stage to appear commanding, witty or clever; to appear anything other than beaten and suffering, indeed. He blinked dazedly, a glowering frown pulling his swollen brows low over his eyes, making the damage look more serious than it was. ‘What is it?’ he mumbled. ‘What have I done?’
‘Sold your soul to that spawn of Satan Master Secretary Cecil.’ Meyrick answered.
‘I have done no such thing! He cut me off, had me arrested, arraigned before the Star Chamber, ruined…’
‘So you say…’sneered Meyrick.
‘Master Cuffe…’
‘Is as gullible as a virgin
fresh up from the country. No. Your time has come, Master Poley. Convince us now or go to warn the Devil that your Master Cecil the Toad will be joining you both soon.’
‘I have nothing more to tell you,’ mumbled Poley at his most abject and defeated. ‘I have been wronged by Master Secretary, traduced before the Star Chamber and have come here seeking to aid the Earl in revenge for the hurts done to me. That is all!’
‘Well then, as I said, let us proceed.’ Meyrick straightened, clearly keen to get down to business.
Poley could see little of what happened next but he understood what was going on well enough. A second rope was tied to the wrists behind his back. A rope long enough to be thrown up to run through some kind of hook screwed into a beam in the low ceiling. All this went on behind him of course. Also of some interest was the stirring at the door in front of him as someone to the rear of the little crowd gathered there shouldered his way out. But then Poley’s focus closed down onto more immediate matters. Gerrard’s and St Lawrence’s fists might have been damaged by their repeated contact with his head but they were strong enough to pull the rope taut. Poley was forced to lean forward as his wrists rose relentlessly towards the ceiling. The strain on his shoulders was enormous and agonising. The chair teetered on its fore legs as the rear ones rose an inch off the floor. ‘Wait there for a moment,’ ordered Meyrick.
*
The room fell silent. The creaking of the rope ceased. The scrabbling of the chair legs across the floorboards stilled. There was no sound except for Poley’s heaving gasps. The pressure did not ease – but then, neither did it worsen.
‘Now,’ said the Welshman. ‘We are mere heartbeats from tearing your arms out of your shoulders and crippling you for ever. If you have any truth to tell us in place of these lies and prevarications, you have until the count of five to vouchsafe it. One…’
When he reached Five and Poley still remained silent, Meyrick gestured at his torturers and they pulled the rope. Poley had not been frightened by the count-down because he saw it as another mistake in the interrogation process. He had simply invested the extra time and the warning, which proved how inexperienced Meyrick really was in such matters, in preparation to counter as best he could what must inevitably follow. He therefore used the countdown to tense the muscles of his shoulders, upper arms and back as tightly as he was able. Arms and shoulders mercifully strengthened by the hours of practise he put in with his rapier at the behest of the master of defence who was striving to perfect his technique. His racing mind promised that he might have a chance of getting through this less severely damaged than his overconfident torturers threatened. He had never suffered the strappado, but had seen men put through it, either standing - or seated, as he was now. And it seemed to Poley that someone with sufficient self-control and fortitude could survive the first elevation without too much harm. When he had seen it done in The Tower’s torture chambers, he had noticed that the real damage was done when the victim was raised almost to the ceiling and dropped – then brought up short just before they hit the floor. It was the jerk of stopping the victim so suddenly that allowed his bodyweight to tear his arms out of the shoulder sockets. Just as, when the executioner at Tyburn got the drop exactly right, the hanged man’s weight could snap his neck instantly and cleanly. There was a fair chance that Meyrick’s men did not know this. And even if they did, this room was far too low to allow them to copy the technique, even though they had tied him into a chair.
Poley’s theories were put to an agonising test at once. Gerrard and St Lawrence pulled the rope as soon as Meyrick gave the signal. Fortunately they did so smoothly, hand over hand, like sailors raising sail. Poley swayed clear of the floor, tilting further forward, the weight of his body swinging him and his chair like a pendulum back and forth. The strain on his shoulders was enormous but the joints seemed to stay secure while the pain was intense but bearable. Up he went, watching the stout boards of the floor recede beneath his toecaps. Sweat ran off his forehead. Rather than flowing into his eyes, it dripped off the swollen ridges of his eyebrows onto the edge of the seat between his thighs. He ground his teeth together, feeling his twisted muscles begin to judder and jump with the strain. He found to his surprise that he was continuing Meyrick’s count – six, seven, eight…
He had reached twenty when the group at the door exploded inwards, pushed forward by the arrival of Nick Skeres, Henry Cuffe and Francis Bacon. He caught a glimpse of the Earl of Southampton in the shadows behind them and it occurred to him more forcefully than ever that Southampton might well have been the mysterious individual responsible for the murderous runaway cart. Especially if it really had been aimed at him but killed poor Legge instead. Unless, of course it was Cecil and it hit its intended target after all.
‘What is going on here?’ bellowed Bacon, his voice quivering with outrage. The surprise of his arrival made Gerrard and St Lawrence lose their grip. Poley’s chair crashed to the floor and it was the joints in the wood rather than those of sinew and bone which yielded. The chair was simply smashed apart. Poley luckily fell sideways as it did so – hitting the floor with his shoulder rather than his already battered face. He rolled as clear of the wreckage as he could, the front legs still secured to his ankles, the rest in sticks and splinters all around. He was winded and his shoulders burned almost unbearably but he was otherwise unhurt. There was nothing he could do for the moment, however, other than lie there trying to catch his breath and control the pain, watching and listening as events continued to unfold.
‘We have to establish once and for all where he stands,’ snarled Meyrick.
‘And this is the way to do it?’ countered Bacon. ‘Methods worthy of the Inquisition?’
‘As used in the Tower itself, by Rackmaster Topcliffe and his men and you know it Sir Francis! Desperate times call for desperate measures.’
‘And we have precious little time before the Earl comes home and we need to be certain do we not?’ added St Lawrence, ready to make a fight of it.
‘Before…’ Sir Francis looked around the room, his face set in an expression of shock. ‘Have you not heard, man? Do you not yet know the truth of the matter?’
‘Heard what?’ demanded Meyrick. ‘Is the Master not returning after all?’
‘Returning?’ echoed Sir Francis. ‘Oh yes, the Master is returning. But to an empty house. Lady Francis, Lady Lettice, My Lord of Southampton and his Lady, you, me and all of the others must leave the place at once. Even Fitzherbert, his family and the other servants apparently must do so. The Earl will be accompanied by Sir Drue Drury and Sir Richard Barkely, who will bring specially selected retainers with them. It seemingly makes no difference where we go or how long we must go there for, but the Earl will not be allowed to return until Essex House is emptied of every single one of us!’
*
‘And that means you had no call to torture my friend!’ added Cuffe, his outrage giving him courage to stand against Meyrick and his bullies. ‘He will be no nearer the Earl than he has been while the Earl was held at York House!’
Poley rolled over, shouting, his tone full of justified outrage, ‘No more of a danger to him than I have been since I came here out of the Fleet, hoping his friendship would allow me to come to quits with Master Secretary in the matter of my revenge! And I would be grateful,’ he added, ‘if some one of you would loosen my bonds now that the matter is settled!
It was Cuffe who came forward to untie him and help him unsteadily to his feet. By the time he was upright, the room was all-but empty. Only Cuffe, Skeres and Bacon remained. Meyrick and his cohorts had slunk away. Poley began to wonder whether he had really seen Southampton in the outer shadows after all.
‘No doubt they are all gone at once to pack their necessaries and plan where to seek refuge, sustenance and sweet wine now,’ he said pensively as he straightened. The moment he did so, the rising sun came out and the brightness flooding the little room lit up his face. Sir Francis crossed to him in a couple of strides an
d took him gently by the chin, turning him further into the light. ‘I will get Sir Anthony’s physician to look to you once more,’ he said. ‘Your face clearly needs attention and I have no doubt your shoulders will need careful tending or you will end up looking like Master Secretary in the matter of a crooked back. I am taking Sir Anthony to Twickenham with me. Doctor Wendy will go there too. I shall arrange for you to accompany us and remain there until you are fully recovered. It is but a short voyage upriver after all.’
Then he continued, ‘The Earl and Lady Southampton must sadly return with their retinue to Southampton House. Lady Lettice and Sir Christopher will return to Wanstead and Lady Frances will go to Barn Elms where her mother resides. How many of the Earl’s … ah… retainers… will be welcome at either establishment – or at Southampton House - I cannot say. Sir Henry and the Secretariat will settle at Barn Elms with Lady Frances I’m sure, though Wanstead Hall and its associated property at Stonehall is the larger of the two. Sir Gelly will go from place to place as his responsibilities as Steward dictate. As for the others…’ He shrugged.
‘I’ll try my luck at Wanstead,’ said Skeres. ‘And maybe use your name as my petition for entry, Master Poley; if I could bear a message to your cousin Sir Christopher Blount about your situation and imminent arrival when you are healed.’
‘By all means,’ said Poley. ‘But, friend Cuffe, I would suggest that you make no play on my name at all when you join Sir Henry Wotton and the others at Barn Elms.’ Poley had been a frequent visitor there when Sir Francis Walsingham had been in residence, splitting his time to the north and the south of the river. There were too many amongst the household there who knew him of old – it would be back to square one, he thought.