London (104 page)

Of course, the true and perfect kingdom was not due until the world’s last days. This was known from the biblical Book of Revelation. But one could at least approach that state. Wasn’t it the plain duty of every freeborn Puritan to march with his brethren towards the light and build God’s kingdom – the shining city on a hill – here and now? It was, after all, no more than the medieval idea of a commune. But this time a commune for God.

So it was that little Martha, growing up amongst such people, came to possess a dream that would be the guiding vision of her life. When she crossed the river and looked across to London’s crowded houses and the dark, Gothic mass of old St Paul’s, in her mind’s eye she saw God’s kingdom, waiting to rise. She saw it so clearly: a shining city on a hill.

She also possessed the virtue of patience. And patience was needed. When King James had come to England from Presbyterian Scotland, the Puritans had hoped: “Surely he will bring the true faith with him.” But James had not enjoyed being subject to the Scottish elders, and he realized that the authority of the monarchy depended upon its supremacy over the English Church. The Church of England, with its reformed Catholic faith, its bishops, ceremonies and all the rest, must remain. As King James remarked to his English councillors: “No bishop, no king.”

So the Bishop of London still presided at old St Paul’s, and in the tiny parish of St Lawrence Silversleeves, the clergyman, aided by Ducket and the other vestrymen, insisted that Martha and the other Puritan parishioners should attend communion three times a year and make a respectful show of outward conformity to the Church.

The book she now pushed towards her brother was the Geneva Bible. It contained the complete scriptures, translated back in King Harry’s day into simple English by Tyndale and Coverdale, then revised by the scholars in Calvin’s Geneva; and for half a century it had been the beloved guide to every Protestant Englishman. It even had illustrations. True, this very year, on the king’s orders, a new translation had been produced, less Calvinist in tone, but also less homely. Though following the beloved Geneva Bible, this new King James, or Authorized version contained sonorous, Latinate phrases which could not please simple Puritans. Like most true Protestants, Martha did not intend to use it.

“Swear.”

She had needed patience with Cuthbert. Her grandmother had said he was damned; but she had never given up hope. And gradually, it seemed, her prayers were answered. He had married a sensible girl, not ungodly. At first, though they lived in the next street, her grandmother would not see them; but after a daughter had been born, she had persuaded the old woman to visit them. And what joy it had given her when, after his first son was born, Cuthbert and his wife had asked her to choose his name. She had chosen from the Bible. “Call him Gideon. For he was a warrior for the Lord.”

But today was even more special: the culmination of years of patient prayer. It was also a trial that, gentle as she was, she knew she must not shirk.

That cursed theatre. Despite her prayers, after all these years Cuthbert was still being led astray. She had used to blame his friend Meredith, that frequenter of women. But partly also, she now realized, she should blame the playwright Shakespeare. For, however he did it, he appeared to have cast a magic spell over the people of London.
Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet
– the crowds went to the Globe by the thousand, and poor Cuthbert followed, foolish as the rest. “All London goes,” he once protested. “Not all,” she had corrected. “And the playhouse is still an abomination unto the Lord.” Shakespeare, she had no doubt, would have much to answer for on Judgment Day. But Cuthbert could be saved, and today she had her chance.

Three weeks ago their grandmother had died, leaving her alone in the house where she and Cuthbert had grown up. Cuthbert’s lodgings were small, his family getting larger every year; but her grandmother had been adamant: “The house is Martha’s.” So, when a few days before, Cuthbert and his wife had come to ask if they might not share this larger space, she had known what she must do.

“I cannot have Cuthbert in grandmother’s house if he frequents the playhouse too,” she told them. “It is time,” she told Cuthbert gently. “I am helping you to break an evil spell.”

Poor Cuthbert had thought of his family and now, taking the proffered bible, he swore; and went on his way, sorrowing, but saved. And Martha rejoiced greatly in her heart.

How well Julius learned. Sir Jacob was astonished. Though four of his children had died in infancy, three girls and two boys lived. Two of the girls were married and the elder boy had gone to Oxford at sixteen. But although the girls were inclined to be frivolous and the elder boy lazy, Sir Jacob could find no fault with Julius. He was such a willing boy. By the age of four he would cry – “No popery,” or “God save the king” – so boisterously that even Sir Jacob was amused.

He delighted to take Julius out with him. The pattern was invariable. Coming up the lane by Mary-le-Bow, they would turn right into Cheapside, as the West Cheap was now called. Dressed in a cloak and tunic of sombre hue, with stockings to match and silver buckled shoes, his neatly pointed grey beard jutting over a perfectly starched white ruff, his hat sporting only a single feather, walking a little stiffly but very erect and carrying a silver-topped stick, Sir Jacob Ducket always looked exactly what he was, a Protestant gentleman; and how proudly Julius, now eight years old and dressed in breeches and tunic with a big, floppy lace collar, would walk by his side and receive the bows of the men they passed. Their first port of call, a hundred yards down Cheapside, was always the Mercers’ Hall.

The world of the London guilds was more splendid than ever. The greatest of them, including the Mercers, had acquired not only corporate coats of arms but their own ceremonial liveries, and were known as the livery companies. Like others during the Tudor period, the Mercers, still using the old site where Thomas Becket’s family house had been, had built a sumptuous banqueting hall, with huge oak-beamed ceilings, and much gilt. “We’ve always been mercers,” his father would remind him. “So was Dick Whittington. And Thomas Becket’s father, too, they say.” So it was clear to the boy that the Mercers, even more than the other livery companies, must be very close to God.

But their real destination, past Cheapside and the Poultry, and a little way up Cornhill, was the place Julius loved. It lay on the gentle slope of the city’s eastern hill, just below the huge site where, twelve centuries before, the vanished Roman forum once had stood. Built in Elizabeth’s reign by Sir Thomas Gresham – a mercer, of course – it was a great, rectangular paved courtyard surrounded by open vaulted arches with chambers above, all of brick and stone, in a Renaissance style.

It was called the Royal Exchange. And there, at the start of the Stuart age, Sir Jacob Ducket undertook ventures of which his ancestors could never even have dreamed.

All through the Middle Ages, the huge fleets of the German Hanseatic towns had dominated the northern seas, and the mighty market of Antwerp in Flanders had been the hub of all northern Europe’s trade. But during the last sixty years great changes had taken place. Newly assertive English merchant shipping had made such inroads on the Hansa monopoly that the old London Steelyard of the Hansa men had finally been closed; and as the Reformation led Protestant Antwerp into a ruinous war with its Catholic Habsburg overlord, London had grabbed a chunk of the Flanders trade for itself. The new Royal Exchange, where the merchants of London met, was, appropriately, a copy of the great meeting place, or
bourse
of Antwerp.

But the real change was more profound. Sir Jacob’s ancestors the Bulls, proud members of the Staple, had exported wool; gradually cloth was added. Silver Ducket had exported more cloth than wool. But these ancient trades were mature and gradually declining. “The increase must come from elsewhere,” Silver Ducket had predicted. It was a group of bold Elizabethan entrepreneurs, mostly mercers, who were at the heart of it: the Merchant Adventurers they called themselves. As the buccaneers like Francis Drake opened up new markets, they hastened to convert them into settled lines of trade. Voyages and convoys were financed; trade charters and treaties sought. Logic swiftly led to the forming of particular groups to develop each new market, but since their business involved large investments in shipping, the risks needed to be shared widely. And as the enterprise was not just a single voyage, but the carrying on of a long-term trade, a more permanent form of business agreement had to be found. Just as Shakespeare and his friends had decided to share the costs of building the Globe and divide the profits year by year, so the adventurous merchants of London were making similar arrangements on a grander scale. Thus, in London, the joint stock company was born.

The Levant Company, the Muscovy Company, the Guinea Company, the East India Company – at the Royal Exchange, young Julius became familiar with every one. Sir Jacob was a Merchant Adventurer with deep pockets and had shares in them all. He would tell little Julius about them, or sometimes read to the boy from the thrilling pages of Hakluyt’s
Voyages
. But one day at the Royal Exchange, when his father asked him which of these great ventures he liked the best, Julius enthusiastically exclaimed:

“The Virginia Company.”

“The Virginia Company?” Sir Jacob was surprised. When Sir Walter Raleigh had named the great American territory, there had been nothing there except some Indians. Attempts at a trading post had foundered. But in the last few years, believing in the potential of the territory, the Virginia Company had sent out settlers to try again in the huge American wastes, and a rather uncertain bridgehead, called Jamestown, had been established by Captain John Smith. “Why Virginia?” Sir Jacob asked.

How could the boy explain? Was it some instinct carried down from his Saxon Bull ancestors who had founded just such a trading post and settlement on the banks of the Thames a thousand years before? Was it the romantic lure of this huge, undiscovered continent that had sparked his enthusiasm? Perhaps both. But, not knowing how to put his feelings into words, and remembering things he had heard his father say, he answered instead: “Because it will be like Ulster.”

Sir Jacob gazed down in delight, for this was exactly what it was meant to be. The plantation of Ulster, in the northern part of Ireland, was a source of pride for Sir Jacob. In this land of wild papists – “little better than animals” – King James had decided to make a great colony of English and Scottish settlers. Land had been offered on easy terms and an agreement made with the London guilds, who put up a huge investment to stock the farmsteads and rebuild the whole city of Derry in return for future rents and profits. The Mercers alone were contributing over two thousand pounds. As for Virginia, wasn’t the parallel clear? Weren’t the wild papists of Ireland and the heathen Indians of America very similar? Of course they were. The king and Sir Jacob were quite explicit: “Virginia shall be the Ulster of America.”

Curious, he questioned the boy further. What did the settlement mean? Did it mean order? Julius nodded: “So that things work.” And was it done for profit alone? Julius frowned, “I think it’s a place for good Protestants,” he said. Did he think, then, that he could serve God, here in the Royal Exchange as well as in the church? At which, after a little thought, the boy smiled happily. “Why yes, father. For didn’t God choose us?”

And Sir Jacob was well pleased.

It was a month later that Julius found the sea chest.

It was lying in a corner of the big cellar under his father’s house, behind some bales of cloth – a dark old chest crossed by a fretwork of brass bands which had long since grown black, and secured by three great padlocks. He assumed it was old.

Not that this was unusual. If the Royal Exchange represented the adventure of the new, the ancient world was still comfortably all around him. In his own home, there were the heavy four-poster beds from King Harry’s reign; a Caxton edition of Chaucer, printed soon after the Wars of the Roses; Silver Ducket’s monastic plate, older still. Why, even the oak panelling and the oak ceiling with its ribs and bosses, though installed but ten years ago, seemed to wear the patina of a solid, smoky age. And it was the same at Bocton. Though the façade of the old ragstone house had been remodelled in Tudor times with a more regular double row of mullioned windows, the estate peasantry still came to pay their feudal fines in the courtroom, the black old cauldrons in the kitchen had been in use since Plantagenet times, and the deer in the park’s great silence moved with a grace as ancient as the woods.

But the sea chest looked so mysterious, he asked his father what it was; only to be astonished by the reply.

“It’s a pirate’s treasure.”

A real pirate: more exciting still, a blackamoor. He listened enthralled as his father told of the strange seafarer who had left the treasure in his keeping. “He went away. They say he kidnapped a girl from the Globe, but nobody knows. He’s never been seen again. Some say he went to America, others that he’s in the southern seas.” He smiled. “If he ever returns, I dare say it’ll be the three tides for him.” Everyone knew what the punishment for pirates was. They were chained to a stake at low tide, downstream from the Tower at Wapping, and left there until the high tide had covered them over three times – a fittingly watery fate.

The role of the old buccaneers had gone. The companies wanted settled trade. They were not even needed in England’s defence since King James had now made peace with Spain. The Puritans might dislike any hint of friendship with the Catholic enemy, but the fact was that England could not afford costly wars, and most men knew it. Buccaneers were no longer needed, therefore, to prey upon enemy ships. Men like Black Barnikel belonged in chains.

But Julius could not help being fascinated. In his mind’s eye, already, Black Barnikel had become an ogre, huge as a giant in a pageant, with furious whiskers, eyes like fireballs . . . And he might have started to day-dream if his father’s voice had not called him back.