Raleigh's Page (3 page)

“Thank you, Walter!”

They walked to the orchard. The lightness of the Frenchman’s step belied his bulk.

“Cold nights, the Monsieur wraps these trees in cloth like Egypt people wrap their dead,” Mr. Raleigh laughed as he pointed. “In the dark they look like giant ghosts. Thanks to his tricks, I bring the Queen baskets of cherries before her gardeners do.”

He paused. “Monsieur: please send my friend John home with slips of your best for him to try.”

Andrew’s father beamed.

As they were walking back past the well-ordered beds, Mr. Raleigh stopped suddenly and turned to the boy. “My neighbors grow roses. I experiment to find what will feed our explorers in America. You will help Monsieur Pena with this work.”

Andrew looked hard at the plants. He’d write Tremayne about them: here was proof of Mr. Raleigh’s plans!

When they got back up to the turret, Mr. Raleigh rang his bell.

A tall page appeared, “WR” embroidered on his jacket.

“Peter,” he said, “welcome Andrew, on trial as the new page. He has a fancy for plants to match your fancy for music. Settle him and arrange his needs.”

Andrew’s father embraced his boy as they parted. “Do your best,” he whispered. “For all of us!”

5

A
NDREW’S
N
EW
H
OME

Andrew had a weakness that came on sometimes when he got scared. His strength would go out for a moment—like when you throw a fresh log on the fire and the flame gutters and almost goes out before it catches again stronger.

When he and Peter got into the hall, it hit him. He couldn’t get his breath. His knees went weak. He sagged against the wall. He knew it would pass, but at the moment it was embarrassing.

“What’s wrong?” Peter asked. “Homesick already?” His voice was cold. There was no reading his face.

“Something I ate,” Andrew replied. “I’m all right.”

Peter was broad-shouldered, with long blond hair. His face was smooth, unmarked. Andrew steadied himself. Panting slightly, he walked beside the older boy.

“You’re from the West Country, like Mr. Raleigh,” Peter said. His voice was deeper than Andrew’s. “Will your father go with him to the Queen?”

“I don’t think so,” Andrew replied.

Peter studied the newcomer without talking as they went down the long hall. His eyes were slate.

He was graceful, no motion wasted, but his teeth were crooked. He was conscious of them and kept his mouth shut except to speak.

“Where are you from?” Andrew asked at last.

“Ireland. When my father comes to London, he goes to the Queen with Mr. Raleigh.”

Peter said nothing more as he led the newcomer to the dormitory, a long, high-ceilinged white room laced with thick oak beams. Small-paned windows opened on the Strand. There were three beds, each with a gray, rope-handled seaman’s chest at the foot. Three desks were lined up under the windows. There were no pictures or ornaments on the walls, just a wooden peg beside each bed. Two were hung with towels.

The third page came in. William was younger than Peter. He was stocky, with bristling black hair cut short. Measles had roughed his skin. He smiled and stumbled as he made to hug Andrew welcome. His feet were big and so were his hands. Andrew was taller but skinnier.

Peter made a sour face at William’s greeting.

“Show Andrew the place of necessaries,” he ordered. “I’ll meet you back here after he’s bathed.”

William led the younger boy down the hall to a dark stone closet in a corner closest to the river. Andrew had to back in, crouching; it was barely wide enough for the holed seat. The shaft emptied into the river.

“It’s no place to linger,” William laughed as Andrew crept out, “and when the cold wind blows up off the river, you’ll want to go before you’ve went.”

They smiled together and walked close, talking fast as William led on to the bathing room, larger and cheerfuller, with windows high up. There were stone basins to pour water in, with a wooden plug for each, and a rack for buckets. William gave Andrew a towel, a heavy square of soap scented with lavender, and a boxwood comb. “This is for cleaning your teeth,” he said, handing the newcomer a string of waxed silk and a pot of charcoal.

As Andrew bathed, William told him how he and Peter had come into Mr. Raleigh’s service two years before.

“I’m thirteen, he’s fourteen,” he said. “We’ve been presented to the Queen. Our tutors at Court are teaching us how to lead soldiers, dance, and manage hawks.”

“Do you and Peter study with Monsieur Pena?” Andrew asked.

“No.”

Andrew wondered if that was because they were richer. The other boys’ fathers had estates and fine houses, but Peter and William were younger sons too and on their own as Andrew was. They had more behind them, though. They wore gold signets; Andrew had no ring.

They met Peter on their way back to the dormitory. He was no friendlier than before as he led them up to the wardrobe, a small sun-filled corner room on the floor above theirs. There was a mirror on one wall, shelves with mounds of folded cloth, canvas-covered forms like statues, and in the corner under the windows a workbench awash with scraps of every color and shape, bits of chalk, measuring tapes, scissors, and thread ends. A large figure was bent over the bench, humming loudly.

“Hello, Mistress Witkens! Hello! Hello!” William called as loud as he could. He kept his voice deep.

Slowly the figure straightened and pushed herself up from her bench.

“This is Andrew,” William yelled as she turned slowly toward them. “Andrew! The new page.”

A smiling pink face framed in a mass of straggling gray hair greeted the three boys. As she pushed her hair back, colored thread ends caught in her curls. She was quilled like a hedgehog in front, her black wool work apron stuck thick with threaded needles and basting pins.

“Ye catch me without me cap, lads!” she bellowed as she groped for what looked like a large white bag. “I pull it off to see better.”

“He’ll be needing suits like ours, Mistress,” William hollered.

“Oh, he will! He will!” she sang in a deep voice as she pulled the white bag over her head and patted it into place. “And as soon as I fit him up, he’ll pop out of ’em, which is the way it is with you boys!

“Hello, new boy!” she yelled. “Andrew, are you? You look promising, Andrew! Take off your jacket and stand up there,” she said, gesturing to a low, rug-covered platform.

“Yes, madam,” he said. Andrew liked her. She reminded him of a countrywoman he knew back home, his mother’s best friend.

Humming like a hive of bees, Mistress Witkens gathered up measuring tapes, strings, a sheet of paper, and a charcoal pencil and set to work.

As Andrew took off his belt, Peter pointed to the dagger he’d worn traveling. “Have you ever used it?” he asked.

“Only on a bag,” Andrew replied.

“I’ve used mine on a man,” Peter said with a grin that showed his scagged teeth. “In the street, as pay for one who made to pick my pocket. I killed him.”

The way he said it sent a chill through Andrew. He knew Peter was swaggering, but it wasn’t a lie.

Once Mistress Witkens had finished her measuring, the three boys went back down to their room. “Show him what’s in his sea chest,” Peter ordered as he flopped down on his bed to read.

William showed Andrew the silver spoon and blade he was to use at table. Wrapped in silk was a small dragon made of silver, its tail a toothpick, its head an ear spade. There were also quills, paper, a lead inkwell, and an ivory-handled penknife.

William chatted as he handed over those things. It was as if he were making gifts. For a moment Andrew forgot his strangeness. Then he remembered he was at Durham House, on trial. Perhaps what he was holding had been used by a boy who’d failed.

He stiffened and muttered, “Never!”

“What?” asked William.

The younger boy shook himself. “Are these things new, or were they used by others before?” he asked.

“A boy before,” said William. “There was a test. He lied. Mr. Raleigh sent him off.”

Andrew had lied sometimes. He wanted to know what that boy’s test was, and his lie. Before he could ask, Peter came over with his lute. The new page’s coming had made an afternoon’s holiday for them.

“Do you sing?” he asked Andrew.

The boy nodded. He had a fair voice. He knew songs. “And I have a flute,” he said.

“Get it and play for us.”

Andrew played “Oh Noble England” better than he ever had before. William smiled and nodded approval as he kept time. He went and got his fiddle. Soon the three pages were playing and singing rounds together. Andrew’s voice was as high as Peter’s was low. William’s straggled in between. They did part-singing like Andrew had done in school. It felt good to sing. It sounded wonderful.

6

M
R
. H
ARRIOT

The man who lived in the set of rooms beyond the dormitory came out with his fiddle when he heard their music. William introduced Andrew. The man’s hands were cold.

Mr. Harriot was tall and sallow, with black hair thinning at the front and a stark black beard that against his skin appeared almost blue. His eyes were black, large as almonds. He was a little older than Andrew’s teacher back home.

He had an easy laugh and sang tenor. Until the bell for supper the four of them made music together. Then Mr. Harriot led them down to the dining hall.

“It will be a clear night,” he told Andrew as he headed to his place. “The light lasts long now, so after supper I’ll take you up to the roof and show you London at dusk through my glass. I call it a perspective cylinder. When it gets dark I’ll show you the stars!”

Tremayne had told his boys about glasses for looking at a distance, but Andrew had never seen one. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I’d like that.”

Mr. Raleigh usually dined at Court. That evening, though, he ate at Durham House, seated at his high table. The rest of his household, forty in all, sat ranked below him.

Monsieur Pena and Mr. Harriot sat several places above the pages; Andrew sat below Peter and William. Mistress Witkens sat a few places below Andrew, her white bag cap perched and bobbing. James, the guard who’d admitted him that morning, sat next to her. He caught Andrew’s eye and winked again.

They all watched Mr. Raleigh. No one was to begin eating until he did. He poured gravy on his gleaming silver plate, broke in bread to sop, then sprinkled on salt from an elaborate silver container shaped like a ship.

Andrew waited for Mr. Raleigh to lift his spoon. He didn’t. Instead, he signaled the man standing behind him to carry his plate to the crone with wild hair, who sat at the last place.

The room was silent. She muttered a prayer in Latin from the old religion. Mr. Raleigh then took his meal out of a wooden bowl like everyone else.

“Who is she?” Andrew whispered to William.

“A holy woman,” he replied. “Sometimes she stands out front in the Strand chanting the old prayers. She tended the chapel when the Catholic bishop and his priests lived here. When the Queen ordered them out, she wouldn’t leave. Mr. Raleigh said she could stay.”

Andrew looked around the hall. The crone and Mistress Witkens were the only women; guards, servants, and soldiers made up the rest of the noisy company.

William nudged his new friend. “Did you notice what Mr. Raleigh took his salt from?” he whispered.

Andrew nodded, looking up at the silver ship again.

“The Queen gave it to him as a mark of favor,” William said quietly with a proud smile.

Peter ate fast, saying nothing. When he finished, he interrupted William’s whispers. “My father served with Mr. Raleigh in Ireland,” he said, loud enough for everyone around to hear. “They both have large holdings there. The natives are rebellious. When I complete my service here, I’ll go as officer with the army in Ireland. ‘Blood and iron for the natives!’ my father says. ‘No conciliating!’”

He pressed his thin lips so tight together his mouth went white as he fixed his eyes on Andrew. “Do you know Ireland?” he asked.

“No,” Andrew answered.

Peter turned away.

Other talk at their table that night was that Mr. Raleigh was just back from seeing two exploring captains off to America.

When Mr. Harriot finished his meal, he came and sat with the pages. “To the spies on the docks and in the taverns, the rumor is our expedition men are pirates out for prizes,” he reported. “They’ll keep what they catch, sure enough, to help pay for the voyage, but their main business is finding a base for our investigators.”

Andrew’s breath came short. Everything Tremayne had said about Mr. Raleigh’s plans was true!

Mr. Harriot asked the new page friendly questions about his family and schooling. He wore plain black like a Puritan, but the boy soon learned he was not one of those.

“What do you do here?” Andrew asked.

“I tutor Mr. Raleigh in the new mathematics and help his navigators with their maps for deep-water sailing. Maps lie flat,” he explained, gesturing with his hands. “Mr. Mercator’s new projection makes the shortest distance from England to America appear a straight line, but since the earth is round, the shortest way is really a curve. I show the mariners how to allow for the curve of the globe and correct the sea compass. Mostly, though, I study things about America to get ready for going.”

Andrew bit his tongue to keep from saying that was the thing he dreamed of.

“And I am employed by Mr. Secretary Walsingham, the Queen’s chief spy,” Mr. Harriot continued, “composing and breaking codes.”

“Are you a spy?” Andrew asked.

“Watch who you ask that of,” Mr. Harriot laughed. “Some might think you rude. Anyway, as the saying goes, ‘The Queen’s eyes are in every place.’ My eyes are in service to hers. Sooner or later yours will be too.

“Now!” he announced, standing up. “To the roof! In the last light I’ll show you a bit of London.” Andrew nodded, smiling and grateful but dizzied by so much new and strange.

When they got to the roof, Mr. Harriot reached into the pocket of his long black coat. “Here,” he said, handing Andrew a brass tube. “Astronomy is what I like best. This is my device for looking at a distance.”

Andrew put it to his eye. Suddenly he could make out deckhands on ships in the Pool, then, some distance down the Strand, a red-faced man telling another a story with big gestures and laughter the boy could see but not hear.

“I fashion these myself with lenses I have made from rounds of glass I get from the glassblowers,” Mr. Harriot was saying. “I buy the ones with the fewest waves or bubbles and take them to a Jew in Amsterdam who cuts gems. No Jews here and it is our loss.”

Andrew wanted to ask why there were no Jews in England, but Mr. Harriot was eager to go on about his lenses. “My friend in Amsterdam shapes the glass for me, working the rounds like a potter on a wheel, cutting with tools of crystal and polishing with garnet paste. I calculate the curve he must cut to from pictures in a book from Baghdad. What I’m learning now, my Arab author knew five hundred years ago.”

“What do you mean, your ‘Arab author’?” Andrew asked.

“The Arabs were great astronomers,” Mr. Harriot replied. “They built on what the Greeks knew. I have an ancient Arab astronomy book I got from a Turk trader out of Constantinople.”

“We saw Turks at Plymouth,” Andrew said, eager to add something to the talk. “A Turk trading ship foundered on the rocks off Plymouth and put in there. Some of the crew had fever. The town doctor wouldn’t go to them because he said they kill Christians. My mother went and tended them.”

“What were they trading?” Mr. Harriot asked.

“Cloves and cotton. They paid her in spice and cloth.”

“Good trade for us, if we could get it,” Mr. Harriot mused.

As the sky began to go from pale gray to smoky purple, dots of light came on like someone lighting candles far away.

“There’s the waning moon. No planets now, but stars,” Mr. Harriot explained. “That one over there is the North Star; to the left, higher, the Big Dipper,” he said, helping Andrew aim.

Through the brass cylinder Andrew saw stars closer than the eye ever brought them, but he was more eager for Mr. Harriot’s talk about America. He wished Tremayne were there to hear it.

Before Andrew could get Mr. Harriot away from his stars and back to the New World, Peter and William came up to join them for a quick game of catch in the last light.

They used one of Mr. Raleigh’s tennis balls. Mr. Harriot said they were stuffed with the hair of poor women. It was a point of honor that no ball go off the roof. The last time his turn came, Peter threw hard over Andrew’s head. As the newcomer leapt to catch it, he nearly went off the roof himself.

Mr. Harriot scowled as the shadow of a smile flickered across Peter’s face. Andrew felt sick.
Already I have an enemy,
he thought.