Bartholomew Fair (28 page)

‘I did. At last. He has an older brother, one Oliver Borecroft. Not a toy man. Not a shop man or merchant at all. Guess what his occupation is?’

‘Nick,’ Phelippes said grimly, ‘stop playing games with us.’

I had been watched Berden closely and I could see he was almost beside himself with glee. He could not bear not to savour his moment.

‘Oliver Borecroft,’ he said slowly, ‘is a cook. A gentleman’s cook. He is, in fact, the cook at the Herbar. Nicholas Borecroft is living with his brother at the Herbar.’

Phelippes and I simply gaped at him.

‘You know that he is
living
at the Herbar?’ I said at last.

He nodded. ‘Oh, never fear. I did not walk up to the door and ask to see him. Once I discovered that his brother worked there, I made some discreet, very discreet, enquiries amongst the victuallers who supply the house, above all, of course, the kitchen. I was thinking then of how I might find an opportunity to speak to the cook, but quite by chance one of the butchers just happened to mention that the cook had his brother staying with him. He thought it a great joke. He knew the toy man was hiding from his creditors. ‘Who would think of looking for him in the home of England’s piratical sea captain?’ was the way he put it.’

‘But he is not merely hiding from his creditors,’ Phelippes said slowly.

‘Nay. Whenever the conspirators want to enter the house, all he has to do is open the door for them. In they walk, free as you please.’

‘A Trojan horse,’ I said quietly.

‘Aye, exactly.’ Berden nodded at me. ‘A Trojan horse.’

‘The attack could happen any time now.’ Phelippes was on his feet again. ‘It could happen tonight. Nick, will you go to Sir Francis and ask him if he will step along here? I will write to warn Drake’s party, but it will be best if Sir Francis signs and seals it himself. They will be more likely to take heed, particularly Drake himself. Then we will need a fast and reliable messenger.’

‘I’ll see to it.’

Berden went out, having fully recovered his breath now, and Phelippes sat down to write his letter. I leaned back in my chair, aware that my heart was pounding, as if I too had been running. Everything was coming to a head now. I just hoped we could catch the conspirators before they carried out whatever was their plan.

It was only minutes before Sir Francis arrived to sign the letter and stamp the sealing wax with his insignia. One of the armed men who had accompanied us from Barn Elms came in, and Phelippes explained the route the Devon party was likely to take to London.

‘If they are not on that road, you must search until you find them,’ Sir Francis said. ‘It may indeed be a matter of saving lives.’

The man took the letter, bowed, and ran off.

‘And now?’ Sir Francis said.

‘Now we must be ready to forestall these villains,’ Phelippes said. ‘Berden, some of your men had better stay watching the Italian merchant’s house, but I want you to move the rest to the Dowgate. Discreetly, mind. I not only want to stop this outrage but catch the men behind it. I will come myself, so I can be on hand.’

‘I think I should come as well,’ I said.

They all turned to me in surprise. I think they had forgotten I was there.

‘You must remember the gunpowder,’ I said. ‘If it explodes, people will be hurt. I may be needed.’

Sir Francis nodded. ‘Kit is right. There could be injuries, even if the gunpowder does not explode. Remember, we are dealing with men who are not only desperate, they are soldiers. However skilled Nick’s men are at hunting out information and tracking people down, they are not trained in arms.’

‘Some are skilled at fighting in the streets,’ Berden said with a grim laugh, ‘but you are right, Sir Francis, they are not accustomed to fighting soldiers.’

‘It is too late to call out the militia,’ Phelippes said. ‘Besides, that would probably just drive them into cover. The London Trained Bands are not known for the subtlety of their manoeuvres.’

‘It will be up to us then,’ Nick said. ‘Strategy against strength. We could do with that dog of your, Kit. He’s a good fighter.’

I was thankful Rikki was not with me. He had taken a sword slash for me once, but he would have no chance against a musket.

‘Very well.’ Phelippes slung on his cloak and walked to the door. He looked absurd, his spectacles shining in the light of the sinking sun, his slightly stooped back more suited to a seat behind a desk than at the head of a ramshackle army of vagabonds.

Nick and I bowed to Sir Francis and followed him out of the door.

Chapter Fifteen

B
erden, Phelippes and I made our way on foot to Dowgate. It was growing dark and the shops along the streets were ceasing business for the day, the apprentices putting up the shutters while their masters stood by, ready to lock up the premises securely for the night. A few street traders were still crying their wares, their voices hoarse at the end of the day, hoping to dispose of the last of their stock rather than carry it home till the morrow. Suddenly a man loomed up out of a dark alleyway, making us all start.

‘Buy my fish, my fine fresh cockles, buy my oysters, fresh from the river!’ he leered at us, waving a dead fish by its tail under Phelippes’s nose

From the stench that surrounded him, his goods were far from fresh, and Phelippes backed away, dismissing him angrily with a wave.

The fishmonger spat on the ground at Phelippes’s feet and went off in the direction of Billingsgate, cursing under his breath, as we turned into Candlewick Street.

‘Who would eat oysters from the Thames!’ I exclaimed. ‘It is no more than an open sewer. A man who falls overboard into the Thames might as well jump into a plague pit.’ I shuddered at the thought of that filthy stew of offal and dung closing over my head. ‘You should never eat Thames oysters, not from near London. Kent oysters, from Whitstable or further away, are the only ones safe to eat.’

‘Some poor folk,’ Berden said, ‘have no choice but to eat Thames fish and Thames oysters. Though even Kent oysters may turn bad.’

‘True enough,’ I said. ‘I first met Robert Poley through a matter of bad oysters.’ And that was where all of this had begun, I thought.

‘The Thames grows more polluted every year,’ Phelippes said. ‘With the city drawing in more and more people, we shall soon drown in our own filth.’

‘More of it should be buried,’ I said, ‘instead of dumping everything in the river. It is not only the soil from privies and chamber pots. The butchers from the Shambles throw their leavings in the river, whatever the stray dogs do not steal.’

‘Middens and cesspits are become more valuable,’ Berden said with a grin.

I stared at him. ‘Valuable!’

‘Aye, did you not know? They use the muck from cesspits in some way to make gunpowder.’

‘Now there’s a fine irony,’ I said. ‘Perhaps that is the answer to London’s problems. Turn it into a mine for gunpowder.’

We all laughed nervously, for the strain of the forthcoming encounter was beginning to tell on us.

At last we reached Dowgate, but stopped short of the Herbar, at the corner where Berden’s men had been told to meet us. Lined with substantial houses, the Dowgate was a prosperous street, with only occasional shops here and there. Those few to be seen were of some considerable quality – milliners and glovers, swordsmiths (but not their forges) and a few bake houses selling dainty pastries and suckets. Every house had a lantern hung before its door now that it was past dusk, though city regulations did not require it at this time of year. The householders here would want to discourage undesirable prowlers. There were several stout hitching posts for horses at intervals along the street, and near the Herbar a well-built stone horse trough. It seemed the inhabitants ensured excellent conditions for their own and their visitors’ horses as well.

Berden deployed his men quietly, sending four of them down an alley running alongside the Herbar, so they could keep watch on the garden at the back of the house. The rest he placed along the Dowgate in both directions, both down towards Thames Street and the river, and up to Walbrook. We ourselves found a corner beside a jutting wing of a house directly opposite the front door of Drake’s house.

‘The kitchen door opens into that alleyway,’ Berden murmured softly, pointing to where his men had disappeared into the dark. ‘That is where the deliveries are made. Our fellows could gain entrance either there or here at the front.’

‘Do you suppose they plan to wait till the party from Devon is here?’ I said. ‘If so, they will probably keep a watch for them, and if they do not come, delay any action until another day.’

‘We don’t know for sure that they mean to attack Drake’s family,’ Phelippes said reasonably. ‘They may prefer to attack while the house is empty except for a few servants, grab what valuables they can, then flee.’

‘They could have done that any day since the meeting at the Fair,’ I objected.

Berden shook his head.

‘Nicholas Borecroft only moved in here yesterday,’ he said. ‘Probably they were waiting for that, to make it easier for them to gain entrance.’

I nodded, but doubted whether he could see me in the dark. What he said made sense.

‘But still,’ I said, ‘now that Nicholas Borecroft is lodging in the house with his brother – and if we are right, he is there as a Trojan horse, to let them in – what is the purpose of the gunpowder? There are too many strands to this plot. I am not sure we have made it out, even now.’

Phelippes grunted. ‘Well, we shall have to wait and see.’

He shifted uncomfortably. He was even less at ease with this long wait than I was, but Berden seemed quite relaxed, managing to remain quiet and still, like a skilled hunter waiting for his prey.

Time stretched on. There were no more passersby, neither small tradesmen hawking their wares nor ordinary citizens on their way home to supper. One by one, the candles and lanterns inside the houses along the street began to go out as the inhabitants made their way to bed. In the Herbar there had been lights in two of the ground floor windows at the front when we arrived, and a light shone across the alleyway, probably from a window in the kitchen premises. Now one of the downstairs lights went out and we could see a light moving upwards – someone, probably one of the servants, climbing the stairs to the attic bedrooms.

Somewhere, a church clock struck eleven.

Then we all tensed, for the clatter of a horse’s hooves suddenly rang out on the cobbles, approached rapidly from our left, coming up from Thames Street. We drew back further into the corner. It would not do for Sir Francis Walsingham’s senior agent to be reported to the Watch for lurking in the street after dark.

The rider halted before the Herbar, threw his reins loosely over a hitching post, and ran up to the front door. There was nothing at all furtive about his approach. He banged on the door and called out. ‘Message for the steward!’

The door was opened almost at once. We could see a lantern and just make out a tall man in Drake’s livery holding it up. The rider handed over a letter, the men exchanged a few words, then the door was closed again. The rider mounted his horse and rode away up into the city.

‘Of course,’ Phelippes breathed softly. ‘Drake will have sent word that he and his party will not be coming tonight. The steward and housekeeper were probably waiting up for them. Watch. We’ll see them going to bed now.’

He was right. More lights moved upstairs and soon went out. Only the dim glow showing in the alleyway remained.

‘I wonder how many servants there are in the house,’ I said. ‘If the plan is to blow the place up, do the conspirators not care that they are likely to die?’

Beside me, I felt Berden shrug. There was, of course, no answer to that.

I began to get cramp in my right calf and had to bend down and rub it. How long would we stay? Nothing at all might happen tonight. The same church clock struck midnight. I seemed to be hearing that sound every night lately.

Phelippes stirred again in discomfort. If the vigil was to be called off, it was Phelippes who would have to make the decision. I suspected he was reluctant to do so simply on the grounds that he was tired and bored. It would make him look weak, and that would do him no favours with the men he employed. However, nothing seemed to be happening. We could hardly stand here all night.

Perhaps we had read the signs quite wrongly. There might be no plan of attack, for all the scraps and rumours that we had were but straws in the wind, no real evidence. Or it might be that the target was the warehouse, not the Herbar. Nick still had two men watching the warehouse, but they had seen nothing unusual about the place in all the time they had been there. Or perhaps the target was the Herbar, but for a different night. Or perhaps the conspirators intended their gunpowder for someone or somewhere else altogether – Essex, or Goldsmiths Hall, or even the Queen herself! We might have our noses down on quite the wrong trail. Except that Borecroft had been seen with Poley and the puppeteers, the puppeteers had been seen with the soldiers who had the gunpowder, and now we knew that Borecroft was here. Surely we could not be mistaken? That trail must lead to the Herbar.

Phelippes was whispering to Berden. ‘I think we will stay until two o’ the clock. If nothing has happened by then, we will abandon this for now, just leaving a few of your men to keep watch. All is so quiet, I cannot believe anything is afoot tonight.’

By now my eyes had adjusted well to the dim light cast by the lanterns hanging from the house fronts and I saw Berden nod in agreement.

‘Very well.’

I lifted my cramped leg and wriggled my toes. A little less than two hours to wait. I could manage that.

Then I saw that the faint loom of light in the alleyway had grown, and at the same time I heard the creak of a door. I grabbed Berden’s arm and jerked my head in the direction of the light. He nodded. He had noticed it too. I held my breath. Was something happening at last, or was it just some servant going to visit a privy in the garden?

I thought at first that the light had gone dim again, then realised that it was blocked by the figure of a man, who was not heading to the garden but out into the street directly opposite us. He paused a moment, looking up and down Dowgate, then began to head up the street in the same direction as the messenger, walking fast at first, but quickly breaking into a kind of shambling run.

Berden was tense beside me.

‘That is the cook,’ he said. ‘Oliver Borecroft. Where is he off to at this time of night? Meeting the conspirators? But why him, not his brother?’

A shape detached itself from the shadows and slipped after the cook. One of Berden’s men.

‘I could see the likeness to Nicholas Borecroft,’ I said. ‘This man is plumper, but his face is similar, and he has the same curly fair hair, though his hair is beginning to recede.’

‘It seems something is toward after all,’ Phelippes said, leaning forward eagerly. He had clearly forgotten his tiredness.

The light in the alley remained bright. The door must be open, adding to the light from the window. A candle or a lantern in the kitchen, probably. But it remained quiet. No one was stirring in the house, no one approached from outside.

‘Has he gone to fetch the others?’ Phelippes sounded impatient.

I suppose he hoped that the cook would bring the soldiers back with him now and they could be seized at last, after leading us such a dance.

‘What will your man do?’ I asked Berden.

‘Keep the cook in sight, but not approach him. I’ve warned them all that we want to round the conspirators up, all of them. No point in stopping the cook. He’ll just be the messenger boy.’

‘An odd person to choose,’ I said. ‘He’s too fat to run fast. But everything about this whole affair is odd.’

I thought I could hear some furtive noises from the house and strained my ears to hear better. There was the creak of rusty hinges, then a brief silence, then the sound of running footsteps as Nicholas Borecroft suddenly burst from the alley, his hair tangled and his eyes wild. Berden put his fingers in between his lips and whistled loudly. As he rushed across the street, his men sprang out from their hiding places up and down Dowgate.

Phelippes and I followed Berden, though I was limping a little from the cramp in my leg. Berden had Nicholas Borecroft gripped firmly with his arm twisted up behind his back, and to my astonishment Borecroft was sobbing.

‘I didn’t want to do it!’ he cried. ‘I didn’t want to do it!’

Berden was shaking him, but could get no more sense out of him. He slapped Borecroft across the face, but he only sobbed the louder.

‘Do what, you turd!’ Berden shouted, but Borecroft merely became more hysterical and incoherent.

All this noise was rousing the inhabitants of the neighbouring houses. Lights began to appear in upstairs rooms, windows were thrown open and dimly seen figures leaned out.

I was suddenly seized by a terrible notion. Borecroft had
already
done something. I was certain of it. His brother had fled, not because he was fetching others but because he wanted to get away from the house.

I pushed past Phelippes and Berden and all the men crowding round them and limped down the alley. Berden’s four watchers coming up from the garden nearly collided with me, but I dodged them and reached the open door.

It led, as we had expected, directly into the kitchen. Everything seemed orderly within. There was a huge fireplace, empty now, with a complicated spit mechanism and hooks for stewpots. A row of shining pans, neatly arranged by size, hung on one wall. Shelves reached all the way up another wall, filled with every kind of fancy mould for elegant desserts, jars of expensive spices (all neatly labelled), bottles of essences, three sizes of mortars, and the most enormous block of sugar I had ever seen.