Bartholomew Fair (6 page)

‘He’s a good lad. I gave him a bone to chew.’

Rikki loped across the yard to me, the bone still firmly clenched in his jaws.

I laughed. ‘Very well, you may bring it with you, but do not expect me to carry it.’

I set off on the walk back to Wood Street. The sun was high in the sky now, beating down with relentless August heat. Although it was nowhere near what we had endured in Portugal, it was enough to bring the stench of the City streets to a full ripeness. Very cold weather in winter brought many deaths from chest diseases and even from the very cold itself, but very hot weather brought its own dangers, above all the plague. There had not been a serious outbreak since 1582, the year my father and I arrived in England, but there were some cases every summer, often in the crowded slums near the docks, for the disease somehow seemed to arrive with foreign ships, though no one knew how. It was best to avoid such places when the weather was hot.

As I neared the Conduit in Cheapside, I caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd.

‘Peter!’ I called. ‘Peter Lambert!’

He turned and pushed his way through the throng to reach me, and grabbed both my hands.

‘Dr Alvarez! I heard you were come home, despite all the losses.’

‘Am I no longer Kit to you, Peter?’

I laughed. Peter and I were of an age and had often worked together at St Bartholomew’s, he as assistant apothecary, I as assistant physician.

‘Kit, then,’ he said, looking at me critically. ‘You’ve lost weight.’

‘We all lost weight, those who managed not to die of wounds or disease or starvation. Are you not at work?’

‘I’ve been running errands, ordering new stocks for the hospital. Some have been allowed to get too low.’ He made a face, as if he could say more.

‘Have you time for a beer and something to eat?’

‘Aye, why not? We must all eat. There’s a decent inn back there a step or two.’

We made our way to the small inn he had pointed out, Rikki following behind, still carrying his bone. When we were seated in the small garden at the back, with mugs of beer and a couple of pies and Rikki under the table, Peter took a swig, then set down his mug and looked at me seriously.

‘That was a bad business about your father.’

I nodded. I had been able to speak of it fairly calmly to Walsingham and Phelippes, but Peter knew my father and I found my eyes filling. I turned aside in the hope he would not see.

‘This fellow Temperley,’ Peter said with contempt, ‘he’s a relic from the last century. You’d think Dr Stephens a modern revolutionary to hear Temperley carry on. After working with your father, I know that many of those old ideas of medicine have been proved wrong. Temperley thinks bleeding and cupping and purging are the cure for everything, from a woman’s morning sickness to the bloody flux to . . .to . . . I don’t know!...plague and lightning strike! Most of the time he will not even look at the patients, just requires me to bring a phial of their urine, holds it up to the light, then tells his brother – that’s his assistant, one who’s cut from the same cloth – tells him how much to bleed the patient.’

I’d never seen Peter so angry. He drained half his beer in one swallow.

‘You heard me say we were running short of supplies? Temperley never restocks, has no use for curative herbs. We’d almost run out of your father’s salves and other medicines. I asked Master Winger if I could order what we needed, and he gave me leave. He’s as unhappy as I, but what can an apothecary do, when the physician will not act?’

‘What of Dr Stephens?’ I asked. He was my father’s older colleague, who often argued with him, being suspicious of modern trends, but I believed that secretly he recognised their effectiveness.

‘Oh, he is growing old and lets Temperley take the lead. I think he will retire soon. He only wants the quiet life.’

I picked up my pie and began to eat. It was somewhat greasy, compared with the fare in the Lopez house, but the flavour was good.

‘So the patients are not being well treated?’

‘Far fewer are recovering than used to,’ he said glumly.

There was a pause, then he gave me an odd look, almost conspiratorial.

‘May I tell you something in confidence, Kit?’

‘Of course.’

‘I have not worked beside you and your father these last years without learning something. I have been using your wound salves and burn salves myself, unknown to Dr Temperley. I have had some success, at least when he has not thoroughly weakened a patient with too much bleeding.’

I grinned. ‘So you are turned physician?’

‘I could not claim that, but I want to help those poor folk. That’s why we have run low on some of our supplies. I do remember how to make up some of your cures, but not all of them, so I’m glad to run into you today. I heard you were staying with Dr Lopez and planned to visit you, to ask if you could remind me of those I have forgotten. That is, if you do not think you should keep them secret.’

‘Of course not. I would want to help the patients as well, even though I am told there is no place for me at Barts. You must be careful, though, Peter. Dr Temperley could make trouble for you.’

‘I know. I am careful.’

‘The Temperleys are living in our home in Duck Lane. They bought some of our goods when the creditors seized them. But it seems Dr Temperley thought the books of Arabic medicine were full of demonic symbols.’

Peter snorted. ‘The man is a fool.’

‘Not a fool, if he has qualified in medicine at Oxford, but clearly a man blinkered by his own old-fashioned opinions.’

‘What will you do now, Kit, if you are not coming back to Barts?’

‘I’ve just been to see what work they have for my in Walsingham’s office. And I might find work at St Thomas’s.’

‘Don’t they just take the hopeless and dying?’

There was a slightly patronising tone in his voice, for Barts looked down on Thomas’s.

‘They are all sick folk,’ I said. ‘They all need our help.’

We finished our pies and ordered more beer and a platter of cheese.

‘Do you remember William Baker?’ I said. ‘Who lost a leg after Sluys?’

He shuddered. ‘Not likely to forget, am I? I attended the amputation.’

‘Well, things have turned out well for him. He’s learning shoe-making as well as other leather work and he’s marrying this month. I’m going to the wedding. I’m sure William would be glad to see you there too.’

He smiled. ‘That’s good news indeed. He endured it bravely. I remember that little nephew of his, taking his mother’s cakes and sweetmeats round to the other patients.’ He sighed. ‘Can’t see that happening now.’

‘The wedding is just before Bartholomew Fair,’ I said. ‘I’ve been thinking of getting up a party to go. Would you join us?’

‘Gladly. We can hardly avoid it, right on our doorstep, occupying the whole of Smithfield and making more noise than all the cows, sheep, and pigs together. Aye, let’s set aside our troubles and visit the Fair.’

Chapter Four

A
t the end of a week, I made my way to Seething Lane again, and this time I took Rikki into Phelippes’s office with me. Phelippes stood up at once and I saw that he had been running his hand through his hair from behind, so that it stood up like a cock’s comb, a habit of his when worried or harassed.

‘Ah, good, Kit,’ he said. ‘I was about to send Cassie out to search for you amongst those player friends of yours. I must have some way to reach you. These despatches have arrived sooner than we expected and I need your help.’

Arthur Gregory was sitting at my table and now got to his feet with an expression of relief.

‘I’m delighted to see you, Kit,’ he said, smiling warmly, ‘and sorry to have missed you last week. I am even more relieved than Thomas that you are coming back to work! You know how slow I am at this deciphering. Leave me to my tools and my seals. Every man to his own talents.’

I laughed. ‘Come, Arthur! You are no slouch at deciphering. You just take greater pleasure in your art. And who can blame you?’

Who indeed? For Arthur’s forged seals were works of tiny perfection, even more beautifully made than the originals, which he recreated from copying their imprints on wax. How he managed to carve these tiny images,
in reverse
, was a source of wonder to me. As I had remarked more than once to Phelippes, it was fortunate that Arthur was an honest man, for he could have made a great fortune as an unscrupulous forger. Instead, he dedicated his skills to Walsingham’s service.

It was often necessary for us to open intercepted letters passing between foreign spies and their masters, decipher and translate them, then seal them again and send them on their way. Without Arthur’s skills in first lifting the seals without damaging the paper, then resealing them using one of his forged seals to imprint the wax, all Phelippes’s and my work would have gone for naught. The tampering with the letters would have been noticed at once.

Arthur was a quiet, modest man, but he was a true artist, and I sometimes wondered whether Phelippes and Sir Francis gave him all the credit he was due.

Now, however, he was very happy to take me through the despatch he had been working on, pointing out those parts he had been unable to decipher.

‘It is in French,’ he said, ‘and destined for the embassy here. It was diverted through the network managed in France by Dr Nuñez’s cousin, but originated with Mendoza. It is essential that we send it on its way as soon as possible. Here is my crude first attempt.’

He handed me a sheet of paper with a large number of crossings out.

‘It’s a new code?’ I asked.

‘A variation on one you cracked last year,’ Phelippes said. ‘It seems either they think it is secure, or else they were in too much of a hurry to devise a new one. It shouldn’t give you much trouble. I am working on a batch from Rome.’

Mendoza was Philip of Spain’s principal agent based in Paris. He had once been the Spanish ambassador in London, ordered to leave the country five years ago when he was discovered to have been involved in a plot to assassinate the Queen, a conspiracy led by the Duke of Guise, cousin of Scottish Mary. Ever since, Mendoza had lurked just across the Channel, like some poisonous spider, spinning his web of intrigue intended to ruin England.

Arthur cleared away his rough sheets and threw them on the fire. Even in summer there was always a small fire burning in Phelippes’s office, so that we could burn everything that did not go into the secure files kept in locked chests either here or – in the case of the most important papers – in Sir Francis’s own office.

Arthur went back to his own cubbyhole, where we could soon hear the sound of his tiny tools carving a new seal. I went over to the window and pushed it open a little wider, so that the air from outside might counteract the heat of the fire. Phelippes grunted and placed a weight down on the pile of papers on his table to stop them blowing about. He rarely seemed to feel the heat. I removed my doublet, hung it on the back of my chair, and sat down to work in my shirt sleeves. Sara had made my new shirts with plenty of fabric, so that they bloused out generously, and I had no fear of being seen without my doublet, at least not by Phelippes, who was short sighted and anyway barely took notice of anything but the documents he was working on.

For an hour or so we worked in silence. Rikki had curled up under my desk, resting his head on my feet. After a while they began to feel a little numb, but it was so pleasant to have his companionship, I endured it. There was no sound in the room but his occasional sigh, the scratching of our quills, and faint noises from Arthur’s room. The window here, like the one in Sir Francis’s office, faced the quays, and we could hear the distant creak of the cranes, the occasional shouts of the seamen and dockers, and now and then a faint thump as some crate hit deck or quay.

Finally Phelippes laid down his pen, sanded his ink, and shook the excess into the bin beside his table. He laid the sheet down on his finished pile of documents.

I took the opportunity to pose a question which had arisen from my own work.

‘Who is David?’

He ran his hands through his hair again.

‘We don’t know. It could simply be another identity for a known spy, but I don’t think so.’

‘No,’ I said, holding up the document I had been deciphering. ‘I don’t recognise the hand. It’s a skilled hand. A swift one. He doesn’t labour over the coding as some do. He writes it as easily as the alphabet.’

‘Aye.’ Phelippes allowed himself a tight smile. ‘Like yourself, do you think?’

He had often teased me about my pride in writing quickly in code.

‘Perhaps. Even when it is deciphered, the meaning of all this is very obscure. He seems to be referring to a trip – to England, perhaps? And a “project”. I do not like the sound of that. A “project” usually means trouble. Another attempt on Her Majesty’s life, do you suppose?’

He gave me a sombre look. ‘That could well be the meaning. Can you make anything of it?’

‘Not really. I think there must have been other letters before this, which would have made the meaning clearer. There are no others?’

‘None from this source.’

‘Although it is written in French,’ I said slowly, ‘I think the writer is Spanish. Just by a few turns in the language, and one spelling mistake.’

‘Well, it came from someone in Mendoza’s service, that much we know, so the writer may be Spanish. But if it is addressed to the French embassy, that is no doubt why it is written in French.’

‘Aye.’

The relationship between France and Spain in recent years was constantly volatile. Both were Catholic countries, both hated Protestant England. However, France was riven by internal conflict, where those Huguenots who had survived the Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 formed a strong opposition to the Catholic court. The French were also more than a little uneasy at King Philip’s ambition to rule the entire world.
Non sufficit orbis.
Moreover, his armies’ exploits in the Low Countries came dangerously near to France’s borders. The two nations would join forces when it suited them, but could turn on each other at times. The third player in the forces ranged against us was the Pope. According to Papal decree, our Queen was a bastard, a heretic, and an excommunicant. The Pope had granted a blessing and pardon in advance on any man who assassinated her.

It was little wonder that rumours of a world of tension and suspicion at the English Court were widespread throughout London, or that Sir Francis looked so grey and drawn with worry. On his shoulders rested the safety of the Queen in the face of all this danger. Even Phelippes, Gregory and I played our part in it.

For the moment, we could do nothing but keep watch for more messages from this new agent ‘David’. Something about the confidence of his writing worried me, that and the hint that there had been earlier despatches, concerned with a project and a planned visit to England.

As I was donning my doublet before leaving that afternoon, I turned to Phelippes.

‘That despatch from the new agent, David – it refers to a visit to England.’

‘Aye.’

‘I wondered . . . Everyone is saying that this year Bartholomew Fair is to be larger than for some time. Many foreign merchants are expected to come. Do you not think it might prove easy for an agent from France or Spain to slip into the country, under cover of the Fair? The customs officers at all the ports cannot be sure to scrutinise everyone who comes.’

‘A good point, Kit. I’ll give orders for extra vigilance at the ports. And I will make sure the constables and officers patrolling the Fair keep their eyes open. Do you still plan to attend?’

‘Aye. I think I will go with a party of friends. I will also keep my eyes open. Though I suspect any secret business will be carried on well out of sight.’

‘No harm in being watchful.’

‘I will do my best.’

However, I doubted my ability to recognise a foreign agent amongst all the hurly-burly of the Fair. Agents are chosen for their skill at disguise, at blending in with ordinary folk. Despite the lurid descriptions in the penny chapbooks hawked in the streets for the entertainment of the common people, dangerous foreign spies did not dress in flamboyant clothes, wear masks, or grow extravagant facial hair. They were more likely to resemble the humble shopman who sold you new laces for your shirt, or the street vendor carrying a tray of pasties or ribbons.

‘Before you go, Kit,’ Phelippes said.

‘Aye?’

‘Where can I reach you, if need be?’

Reluctantly, I gave him the address of the Lopez house in Wood Street.

The marriage of William Baker and Liza Cordiner took place at their parish church, St Clement’s in Clement’s Lane, just round the corner from Eastcheap, and was attended by a sizeable crowd. The marriage itself was held, as the custom is, at the church door, then everyone followed bride, groom and priest inside for the service of blessing on the marriage. I went to the wedding in company with Peter Lambert. When I asked William if Peter might attend he grinned with pleasure.

‘Indeed! I shall not forget how he gripped my hand while the sawbones cut through my leg. I near broke his fingers. Bring him, by all means.’

All William’s family were there, and Liza’s father, come back from Essex for the occasion, with a large family I took to be her aunt and cousins. It seemed nearly every shopkeeper from Eastcheap was there, leaving their premises – trustfully! – to their apprentices. Amongst the throng I noticed a sprinkling of soldiers, friends from William’s army days, some of whom I had cared for after the disaster of Sluys, including the very young boy who had been carried off by his scolding, diminutive grand-dam. There were a few of the better sort as well. One man I knew as the landlord of many of the premises rented by the Eastcheap traders, though I believed Jake Winterly owned his shop. Also, to my surprise, I saw Dr Stephens from St Bartholomew’s. I poked Peter in the ribs with my elbow while the priest was delivering his sermon, and nodded toward Dr Stephens. He put his mouth close to my ear.

‘I told him I was coming,’ he whispered, ‘and he said he would come too. I think he takes some credit for William’s recovery, though we know that it was you who saw that he must have an amputation, and who cared for him day and night till he recovered. And found his family.’

I made a face and shrugged. It will always be thus. The greater men will always take the credit for a success but shed the blame for any failure on those of lower rank. It was the Portuguese expedition all over again. Essex would claim imaginary credit, while the common soldiers perished or were turned away empty handed. As for my own success in bringing William through both his physical injury and his state of despair? Well, I was gone from Bartholomew Hospital now, so I was of no account.

The service was mercifully short. Some of these parishes in the heart of the City have a Puritan tendency, and their sermons are known to be interminable. It seemed this parish priest was a firm adherent to the Queen’s own moderate stance on religion. The service, like the church, displayed none of the flamboyance of those secretly inclined to the old faith, nor had it stripped away all beauty and grace in favour of the aridity of Geneva.

Less than an hour made the young couple man and wife, properly blessed and preached over, and saw our cheerful company making its way a few hundred yards along Eastcheap to the Fighting Cockerel inn. This was an old building, sagging a little on its timber frame and beginning to sink into the Thames clay, so that you must step down through the front door into the main parlour. The room was somewhat dark, for the tiny ancient windows admitted little light, and the ceiling, once white-washed, had taken on the colour of caramel from the smoke of many pipes. It is surprising how men even of the small shop-keeping class can find the chinks to buy the new smoking weed from the New World, but they say that once you have taken up the habit, you cannot leave off. Two old men sat here now, with mugs of beer before them and pipes in their mouths, so that their heads emerged from a smoky cloud like a species of humanoid dragon. Surely it must spoil the flavour of the beer?

However, the marriage feast was not to be held here. The inn had somehow managed to retain its garden at the rear, despite all the greed for building land in London. It was a fine, sunny summer day, and we were to take our refreshment out of doors. Trestle tables were set out in the shade of some apple trees which looked as crooked and loaded with years as was the building. Fresh white tablecloths covered what were probably rough boards, and the inn servants were now laying out platters and bowls of good, substantial fare, not the delicate and exotic titbits served at Sir Walter Raleigh’s evening meetings at Durham House, but slices of beef and pork, chunks of pease pudding, purple and white carrots seethed in butter, vast two pound loaves fresh and warm from the baker’s oven, pats of butter yellow as primroses, two great cheeses nearly as big as wagon wheels. There were more refined dishes to follow, probably made by Bess Winterly and her gossips – bowls of flummery, plum tarts, dried apple pies, candied orange slices, and round-bellied jugs of cream. For a moment I felt queasy, and the ground shifted under me, remembering how we had starved on board ship, not many weeks before, but Peter dragged me forward and we joined the rest of that happy, jostling crowd, filling our wooden platters to overflowing, and finding a couple of stools beneath a pear tree where we could turn serious attention to the meal.