A Traitor's Tears (29 page)

‘More money than education, that one,' muttered Brockley in my ear.

‘Before the Norman Conquest,' said Ballanger's presumed assistant, ‘a king called Ethelred the Unready bribed the Danish Vikings not to raid English shores. The bribe was called Danegeld. It didn't work. The Vikings took the money and went on raiding. Or so my schoolmaster told me, when I was a boy.'

‘We are not talking about bribes!' said the fair-bearded gentleman indignantly. ‘We are representatives of the Wool Weavers' Guild in this district and we have the interests of our members at heart. If some of the trades we represent, Master Ballanger, are to be curtailed because worsted cloth doesn't need them, then there must be recompense in some way. That's only right. There will be men put out of work. We recognize that licensed worsted looms are going to increase in number, because of public demand. We have said so. But …'

‘This is ridiculous!' said Ballanger, also indignantly. ‘We are going round in circles. First you agree, then you ask for a bribe …'

‘It is
not
a bribe!'

‘It most certainly is and it would bring my profit margin down to poverty level! I applied in good faith for a proper licence and this is the result!'

He stopped as a sudden uproar broke out in the street. All heads turned that way. Then the skinny youth I had noticed as we came in burst through the door, almost tripping over the bale he was clutching, and behind him, thrusting him ahead of them like a bow wave, came another half-dozen men. John Ryder and his associates were not among these either. These men, like Ballanger himself, were dressed in working clothes. They were also carrying axes and, by their angry shouts, had a purpose for them.

‘What is this?' Ballanger demanded, stepping immediately, and courageously, into their path. Brockley seized Dale's hand and my arm, and pulled us both further away, into a shadowy corner.

‘You … you … ask
that
?' The leader was a big man with the beefy shoulders of an ox and the axe he was carrying had a short handle but a dangerously glittering edge to its blade. He was red with rage and barely coherent. ‘We've just got to know of this here … this
deputation,
this
treacherous deputation
, coming here to make terms with you and back up your demand for a license. You've got away with running this illegal place too long. We let you get away with it because we're peaceable folk …'

‘You look peaceable, I must say,' Ballanger said, or rather boomed. He had a powerful voice. ‘You'd sound more convincing if you weren't waving axes.'

‘That's quite right.' The Weavers' Guild spokesman bustled forward. ‘By what right do you come bursting in here, brandishing weapons and without an appointment …?'

He stopped, because at that point, the intruders laughed and he probably noticed that his words were more than a little ridiculous. The axe-wielding leader broke in.

‘Peaceable we've been, for too long. Because just one illegal loom don't make so much difference. But give you a licence, and there'll be ten more like you, springing up, and saying if you can be legal, why can't they, and snatching our work away out of our very hands. We're carders and fullers, we are. We get our living carding wool ready for the looms and fulling the cloth in our mills, but worsted yarn isn't carded and worsted cloth isn't fulled and if your looms start sprouting up like mushrooms, where are our livelihoods?'

‘That's right!' shouted an excited voice from behind him. ‘Taking bread out of the mouths of our wives and children, you are, Ballanger, and we're not going to have it.'

‘No, we ain't!' The rest of the newcomers joined in.

‘We won't stand for it!'

‘No, that we won't! We'll make firewood of your looms, and we're going to do it now! Come on, lads!'

Dale let out a scared whimper. ‘Keep huddled in this corner,' said Brockley. ‘We'll get out when we can. This is going to be nasty.'

It was nasty already. Ballanger's assistant had sprung to his side and so had his weavers, forming a line between the intruders and the looms. Axes were flourished menacingly. After an uncertain moment, the Guild representatives moved to join the defenders, two of them drawing daggers.

And then, at last, came the familiar voice of John Ryder, bellowing: ‘
Stop!
' in a more stentorian tone than I had ever heard him use before, and in through the door, striding purposefully, came Ryder himself and ten liveried men behind him, all with swords out. The angry intruders swung round to be confronted with a row of sword points. From the defenders, a cheer broke out. The invaders started to expostulate but Ryder raised his voice again.

‘An end to this unseemly business! Everyone who is not part of this establishment – leave now!' A jerk of his head and his men moved to leave the way out clear. ‘Or you'll be taken up for causing a public affray.'

‘Now see here!' The leader of the carders and fullers was truculent, standing with feet apart and gripping the handle of his axe in a determined fashion. ‘We're here with a right good grievance and you can't—'

‘I can. You leave these premises, or I can send to the castle and have a squad down here big enough to take every man of you to its dungeons. I'd have brought them with me if I'd known this was happening. I only found out on the way here! All Dover is buzzing with rumours about angry carders and fullers getting together to attack Ballangers. But it was still a disagreeable shock to find a lot of deliverymen clustered round the street door, scared out of their wits, and saying that there were madmen inside, threatening people with axes! I represent law and order and mean to have it respected. I repeat, everyone who doesn't belong here – go!'

They were going, the carders and fullers first, pushing axes into belts, melting past him, slipping off through the entrance. Their leader snarled at them to stay but only a couple lingered beside him, until Ryder walked towards them, sword in hand, whereupon they gave in and trailed out after the rest of their friends. They were all, I thought, essentially honest tradesmen who had been stirred up by rabble-rousing speeches, but were not really in the habit of marching about in gangs, brandishing weapons. The gentlemen from the Weavers' Guild followed them out, though in a more dignified manner.

‘We were here on proper business, at the invitation of Master Julius Ballanger,' their leader said as he came level with Ryder.

‘I also have proper business, though
not
at Master Ballanger's invitation,' Ryder said dryly. ‘Mine, however, is on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen. You may pursue your own business some other time.'

He nodded in satisfaction as the last of them went out and then, turning, found himself looking straight at me and the Brockleys, as, indeed, the Ballangers and their weavers were now doing.

A familiar figure emerged from the party of men with Ryder. ‘Mistress Stannard? Whatever are you doing here?' said Roland Wyse.

He sounded astonished. As well he might, I thought, if he really had doctored my wine that evening in The Boar. He had probably believed that I was dead or at least seriously indisposed. Finding me here must be quite a shock.

‘Who are these people?' Master Ballanger said. ‘When did they come in? I never noticed them!'

‘You were much engaged with the leader of the deputation from the Weavers' Guild,' I said. ‘You didn't see us. Captain John Ryder knows who we are, though.'

‘Yes, although how you come to be here is a mystery,' said Ryder. ‘But we'll discuss that later. I won't order you out though I must ask you to keep back and not interfere.' He turned to his men. ‘You have your orders,' he said. ‘Search these premises. Don't miss one single cranny. Test every floorboard, every panel, every keyhole. Proceed! You.' He pointed his sword at the Ballangers and their employees. ‘Stay where you are. Wyse, bring in the fellows who were delivering the wool. I'll keep them all together.'

‘What are you looking for?' demanded Ballanger. ‘What do you mean,
search
these premises? Who are you? What do you expect to find?'

‘Priests, possibly,' said Ryder. ‘My name is Captain John Ryder, and I am here on the orders of one Francis Walsingham. You may have heard of him.'

Ballanger stood with his mouth open, struck speechless. Ryder's men scattered about their tasks and Ryder himself came over to us. I said, ‘Has a queen's messenger found you?'

‘Yes. He reached the castle just as we were about to set out for this place. He delayed us. I've read the message.' Wyse had gone out to fetch the deliverymen, but Ryder dropped his voice all the same. ‘Roland Wyse has apparently been doing very odd things with the cipher letter found on Jarvis's body, and Walsingham wants an explanation. Wyse knows nothing of this, by the way. I take it that you do, however. I assume that it's the reason why you're here.'

Wyse reappeared, herding the deliverymen in front of him and pushed them to stand by the looms with the Ballangers and their people.

‘Leave them there and join the search,' said Ryder. ‘I'll stand guard.' He ran a finger suggestively along the blade of his sword. The group by the looms looked nervous. Wyse gave me a further puzzled glance, but obeyed, disappearing through the door at the rear of the room. I watched him go and then turned back to Ryder.

‘On Brockley's behalf,' I said, ‘I have been searching out facts. They made me suspicious of Wyse. When we came across him at The Boar, I set a trap. I don't know whether the message from Walsingham mentioned it, but …'

Ryder listened attentively while I described my trick with the wine, the discovery of the dead mice and the details of my conversation with Walsingham. ‘He doesn't know we're in Dover,' I finished.

‘I daresay! No, his message didn't tell me about it. It's been left to me to decide whether to question Wyse at once or take him back to London first. I suspect you would like me to do some questioning myself, forthwith?'

‘Yes.' I looked at Brockley and Dale. ‘All three of us have a stake in this.'

His brow creased. ‘This is a serious matter. I must consider it carefully. I must also finish my task here, as well. I have orders to do that.'

I said, ‘How is it that you didn't get here – to these works, I mean – before? You say the queen's messenger delayed you this morning, but you surely reached Dover yesterday!'

‘The hazards of travel. One horse cast a shoe, miles from a forge, of course. Miles from anywhere! It was open common, all around. We had to lead the horse slowly for two hours to find any habitations, with its rider perched behind a friend. Then we found a village with a smithy and had the new shoe put on –
after
a long wait while the customer ahead of us had two plough horses and a pony shod. All round, four shoes for each of them. Then next day, one of the other horses stumbled in a pothole, came down and cut its off foreleg badly. Again, we were miles from anywhere, though we did find a farm where we could leave the animal to be looked after. But then we had to carry on with another man riding double, until we found a hiring stables where we could get a replacement. We didn't get to Dover till last night. I'd begun to think we never would! Where are you putting up?'

‘The Safe Harbour,' said Brockley.

Ryder looked at him seriously. ‘I wish with all my heart, old friend, that you were indeed in a safe harbour. If it was a shock when we arrived here to find that a dangerous mob was ahead of us, it was just as big a shock to find you inside!'

Brockley said, ‘Wyse is coming back. I think they've found something.'

Wyse was hurrying towards us from the rear door. ‘Captain, there's something you should see!'

‘A priest in hiding?' asked Ryder hopefully.

‘No, sir. But perhaps a place where one might have hidden. It's through there.' He pointed to the door.

‘Show us,' said Ryder.

I and the Brockleys were not exactly invited to accompany Ryder and Wyse, but we went anyway and no one objected. The rear door, it turned out, led into living quarters. Unlike the weaving shed, they were built of stone and were probably older. We found ourselves first of all in a passageway that stretched from left to right. A door immediately opposite to us, however, was open and we followed Wyse through, to find ourselves in a dining chamber, big enough to seat twelve, with pewter and silverware displayed on a walnut sideboard. The left-hand wall had panelling; the others were of bare stone except for one
mille fleurs
tapestry.

In a corner to our right, a twisting stone staircase led up to what presumably were bedchambers overhead, and a door by the side of the stairs was evidence that there were other downstairs rooms, perhaps a parlour and no doubt a kitchen. In the panelled wall, there was an aperture, about five feet high by four feet wide, the foot of it one panel up from the floor. Within, we could see vague movements and a gleam of light.

‘There,' said Wyse, pointing, and as he did so, two of Ryder's men, the younger one carrying what looked like one of Ballanger's own silver candlesticks, complete with a lit candle, emerged from the aperture, stepping over the awkward panel and crouching to avoid bumping their heads.

‘We tapped the panelling,' said Wyse, ‘to see if any sounded hollow and a section there did. Then Robin there' – he pointed to the young man with the candle – ‘started pushing and pulling, and all of a sudden, there was a grating noise and a whole patch of panelling just slid.'

‘There's a room in there,' said Robin, grinning. He was no more than eighteen by the look of him, and was boyishly pleased with himself. ‘Not big, but it is a room, not a cupboard. It's got a grating, high up – must be set in an outside wall, because there's daylight coming in, kind of greenish, as though it's overhung by a creeper. It lets in air, anyway. There's no musty smell. Will you come and see, sir?'