Queen & Country (11 page)

That day, or the next, he was called to Seething Lane. It was clear to him that Laurence Tomson had not slept for days. It fell to Laurence to receive most of the correspondence from the Netherlands and France. Hew wondered whether he had had the task of breaking the news to Walsingham, which Walsingham himself had broken to the queen. There he saw letters from the embassy in France, warning that Elizabeth was now in mortal danger; he could only imagine the fresh flux of fear the news would discharge on the Scottish king James.

Walsingham was there, shivering in furs despite the summer heat, and seemed to shrink inside himself. His voice was hoarse and rasping, and he barely looked at Hew. He delivered his instruction, with a cold, distracted air. Hew was to take a paper, which Laurence had prepared for him, to the gaol at Newgate. Hew had felt quite sure the paper was the warrant for his own arrest. But Laurence, in his quiet way, had set his mind at peace. ‘Take the letter, and this purse, to the keeper of the upper floor. He is a scoundrel, and will ask for more. When you have what we want, come back.'

Hew had asked, ‘What is it that you want?'

Laurence had allowed the slightest twitching of a lip, too worn out to smile. ‘To see my wife and daughter, and a good night's rest. Take courage, Hew, and heart. You will like what you find.'

Hew could not imagine what he could have found to please him in Newgate, a place that even Phelippes sidestepped, from a kind of superstition, when he showed to him the town, that had as many depths to it, as were sorts of men. It was unlikely such a place, where
a seeping rot corroded every joint and sinew, should not infect the man who had the keeping of it, however well-intentioned he might once have been, and the keeper Hew had met was tainted with corruption long before he came. He had taken up the purse and turned it in his hand, and answered true to form, that it was not enough.

‘For thy miching sclaunder, it is recompense. By order,' Hew had said, ‘of the queen's ain secretaire.'

The man had scratched his head, baffled at the Scots, which Hew had delivered with an open countenance, keeping his face straight.

‘This villain is a loose one. He is violent, see? This is little solace, for the trouble he has caused.'

‘Then you will be thankful to see the back of him,' Hew had told him cheerfully. ‘Else you will account to Mr Secretary Walsingham, fetch him up at once.'

Privately, he wondered what kind of a monster he had to recall up from Hell itself. The gaoler spat upon the floor, a slick gobbet of disgust. ‘A bastard he is, like yourself. That is to say, a Scot.'

He had left Hew at the gate, returning in a while with a creature caked in filth, shaking out his limbs a little in the welcome air. The prisoner flexed his knuckles, which were bruised and bloodied. ‘Well met, my auld friend.'

Hew had gaped at him. ‘Robert Lachlan, can it be?'

Robert had answered with ‘Whisht,' and pulled him out of earshot of the jealous guard. ‘I could dae wi' a drink.'

‘And a wash.'

‘Now whit wad a man want wi' that? The pity is, there isnae time. We maun gang awa an play court tae your man.'

‘But how did you end up in Newgate? What have you done?'

Robert had answered, his job.

Lachlan was a man for hire Hew had first met in Campvere. He had seen him last in St Andrews harbour, setting sail for Ghent.

‘You did not tell me,' he accused, ‘that you worked for Walsingham.'

Robert Lachlan shrugged. ‘I telt you that I wasna working for Sir Andro Wood. And that is the truth. If they were in league togither,
what was that to me? I never liked that man. But Walsingham, I serve fae time to time.'

He had been in Newgate, not for any crime, but to lie among the Catholics there, reporting on their plots. It was a role to which he had adapted naturally; in the Spanish wars, he had fought upon both sides, no more and no less than a man for hire. Most of the soldiers there were ordinary mercenaries, who bore little malice to the other side, and there was small distinction on the battlefield. Most of the fighters, on whichever side they fought, had admired the prince of Orange. Robert had the fortune to be entered in his service, earning his respect, and on one occasion, saving his life. He took it amiss that the life he had saved had been snatched while his own back was turned. When one of the papists in Newgate rejoiced at it, Robert had broken the vaunting man's face, and had had to be pulled from his quivering carcass. His shirt sleeves were stiff with the blood, and with it his cover was blown.

Walsingham was furious. ‘Four months. Four months to win their confidence, and you give it all up. What those men might hide, we may never know.'

Robert said impassively, ‘They had nothing to hide. Or I had found it out. You can hang them now.'

‘Hang them, for what? Four months you had, and ran up exorbitant bills, for meat and strong drink.'

‘The drink was to loosen their tongues.'

‘And, when it did, you stopped them at once. God help you, man, I thought you could control yourself.'

‘No man could control himself that was so sore provoked. Twas slander to the finest prince that lived,' Robert had declared.

Walsingham had snapped, ‘Do not, I warn you, show such strong allegiances, that they amount to treason. Since you feel so strong, you will thank me for the chance to avenge that prince's death, and not be left to rot in the dungeon you deserve. Tis likely that her Majesty will wish to act on this, and send some fighting men. You two shall go ahead, as far south as you can, and send us back intelligence.
For you were there before, and served well in that place. God knows, I see no other hope for you.'

‘I am not a soldier,' Hew had reminded him.

‘And he is not a wit. Yet between the two of you, you may make a man.'

Audrey had a bloody streak. She liked to watch the puppet shows at Tyburn and Tower Hill, to catch wind of a scent that even Phelippes shrank from, wafting from the walls of Newgate and the Fleet. Audrey would not flinch, to see a man's flesh torn, nor shudder at his cries, ‘if that man deserved it'. And yet she was not cruel. She pitied the poor fool, and would give a crust to any honest beggar she saw passing by. At the fair, she had wept, at a bear kept in chains. ‘I am that tender at heart. It is not just, do you see?' she explained it to Hew, in the warmth of her bed. ‘That poor bear had done nothing wrong.'

He lay with her all night, the night before he sailed, breathing in her perfume, pungent, rich and dark, closeted inside the whiteness of her flesh, pillowy and ponderous. Her plump fingers tickled the scar on his chest, counting the holes that the needle had made. When her husband had been killed, a knife had pieced his throat. ‘No more than a prick. But you would not believe, how much there was of blood. His beard was like a brush with it, bristled stiff and black.'

He felt her weight upon him, and yielding to the warmth, the comfort of her thighs, he found himself more spent than sated, lunging into emptiness. ‘Be sure and come right back,' she said.

And he had understood, that if he did return, it would not be to her.

Their ship had set sail at first light, and as they waited at the dock for the lighters to set out, Frances had appeared, with a bundle for them both, of blankets, beef and cheese, and a flask of beer. Hew had been moved by the sort of kindness that his sister would have shown. Frances had touched him, briefly on the cheek, and her touch was light and cool. ‘I wish you to be careful, Hew. The stories that are told . . . I could not bear it if such cruelty should be done to you.'

Robert had said, through a mouthful of cheese, ‘That is a lusty young lass.'

They had sailed to Middelburg, and found their slow way south, in close and covert paths betwixt the streams of refugees, thousands trudging north with a life's possessions bundled on their backs. The blockage of the Scheldt, where once Hew had sailed, had cut off the light of the fair and glorious towns that had been the envy of the merchant world, and left them cold and desolate. They made their way to Ghent, to find that it had fallen to the duke of Parma. The people in that town had no more will to fight, and abandoned to their deaths the beleaguered foreign forces who had come there to defend them. Hew and Robert had been sheltered from the occupying soldiers, by a group of nuns, and Robert for his part took two of them to bed, he said, ‘for old times' sake'.

They had sent back, all this while, a clear and true intelligence, by what means they could. When Antwerp also fell, giving up the ghost of that devastated city with no more than a groan, the Spanish who had taken it had opened up the gates for the weary exodus of forty thousand Protestants, and Hew and Robert joined them on their straggled route, to the northern harbours and across the seas. They had returned to London, in 1585, in company among a ship of Flemish weavers, who found they were made welcome there, with others of their trade.

Their work had been acknowledged then, with money from the Crown, and more precious still to Hew, despatches from the Secretary to the Scottish court, reflecting on the service he had done to serve the cause of true religion, and to protect the mutual interests of the English and the Scots. Those interests had drawn closer in his absence overseas. James had consented to repeal the wicked acts that had sent the kirkmen fleeing into England, and permitted their return. He was moving closer to a new alliance with the English queen, to build upon the bond that might exist between them, to the disadvantage of the queen of Scots. John Colville, who had caused a charge to be levelled against Hew, had repaired his own relation with the Scottish
king, and offered a retraction, owning to his fault. James had sent word that he was prepared to hear a plea from Hew, and send to him a passport, if he would go back. The tide had turned at last.

And yet, for all the longing he had felt to see his home and family, he had not returned. Scotland at that time was ravaged by the plague; the kirkmen said that it was God's wrath on the king for imposing those Black Acts upon the Presbyterians, but its sweep was indiscriminate; the court had crossed the country hoping to escape it from it, trailing in its wake, a black dog at its door. At St Andrews, the town was stripped bare to its bones. The colleges were closed. A single note from Giles, sent to Leadenhall, said no more than this: ‘Do not come.' For months after that, Hew heard nothing more.

That, he thought now, was the worst. While he was abroad, he had thought little of his family, so intent and occupied in that present world. Meg had given birth, to a second child. The news had passed him by, with all the joy and terror it had meant for Giles, without a second thought. He had immersed himself in another life. And in that time, he had not considered all the months gone by when they had had no letters from him, when they had not known if he was still alive. The empty weeks were torment to him then; he had felt his exile brutally enforced at the very moment when it was revoked. Often, he had been upon the point of setting out, desperate to have the smallest scrap of news, when Walsingham's own spies retreated from the peste, like the puling lice that flee the cooling corpse. It was Frances, always, who had held him back.

‘Trust your family, Hew. From what you say, your brother-in-law is a fine physician, and your sister is wise; trust them to keep themselves safe.'

‘They can be trusted well enough,' Hew had answered grimly, ‘to go out among the sick, and tend to them, in peril of their lives.'

‘Then put your trust in God. He will not allow such good people to fall sick.'

Hew felt less than sure that God's will worked that way. He was more persuaded of her second argument.

‘What good can it do you to go to them to now? You will carry the peste as you walk through that land. It follows a man wherever he travels. You will spread that plague wide, and fall sick yourself. What use were that?'

She had persuaded him to take up his old business in the custom house, and return to his old room, in her uncle's house. Phelippes was engaged on secret work for Walsingham. He appeared very close with a friend, Gilbert Gifford, who stayed at his house for a few weeks at Holborn. That year, Tom had married, and he and his wife had spent Christmas at Chartley, returning with Mary expecting his child. His father had begun to trade among the Flemish immigrants, where Hew helped to translate. When the work was done, he would walk with Frances in the gardens of the guild house, or call to speak with Laurence at the house in Seething Lane. This sedentary quietness helped put to rest the horrors he had witnessed in the Spanish Netherlands, and he felt more at peace. Robert Lachlan had returned to the London underworld, pensioned to a life of debauchery and drink. Hew met with him occasionally, in the Cock and Bull.

At last, a letter came, the plague had done its worst, and left his family safe. He gave up thanks to God. The way was clear at last, for him to go back home. By then, he had been snared, in such a slender web, he could not see the threads that bound and held him still.

Hew was kept at Chartley for the next five days. Phelippes showed no sign that he was nervous at the wait. He told Hew he had seen that queen, riding in her carriage at the manor gates, and that queen had smiled at him; whatever plots were hatched around her, she did not suspect. But when a letter came, with word returned from Walsingham, Tom became tight-lipped. They rode back to London, and to Seething Lane. Phelippes left at once, and went on to the court. Perhaps he found the time to call in on his wife. Perhaps though, he did not. Whatever happened then, did not trouble Hew. His own life had begun upon a different course.

Chapter 8

Frost of Cares

Hew was held at Seething Lane, and kept there from the sun, for a time in which he lost count of the days. He found himself interned where he had first had his beginning, which then was filled with wonder, now was dark with knowing, emptied of its hope. His innocence was gone, and could not be recovered in that kindless place. He was kept from sleep, and woken as he slept, for the purpose of interrogation, by the agent Francis Mylles, and on more than one occasion, by Walsingham himself. The questions, and the answers to them, did not ever change, but fell into a rhythm with a dull, familiar beat. Walsingham, he sensed, was simply marking time. For when he wished for an exactness of response, he had more exacting methods at his hands, and would not hesitate to use them. The conspirators, this while, had not yet been found. And while they were at large, the friction at the court, and in the steps of those who set their subtle snares for them, had become unbearable. Walsingham relieved a little of his share of it by picking over Hew, and took a vicious pleasure in that small distraction.