Raleigh's Page (7 page)

14

T
HE
W
INE
M
ERCHANT’S
C
LERK

A few days after his visit to Doctor Dee, Andrew was again called from the garden to the turret. He met Mr. Harriot at the door as a small, shortsighted man slunk out.

Mr. Raleigh was pacing. He started speaking as they entered.

“Mr. Phelippes has just made report. He is one of Principal Secretary Walsingham’s chief decoders. He’s learned that a wine merchant in France has a new map showing the Spanish forts in the Caribbean. Our expedition will take on fresh water and provisions at one of the islands there. We need to know where the enemy is.”

Mr. Raleigh turned to the window and spoke as if he were addressing the gulls that were always circling and calling.

“Mr. Secretary wonders if some of my people could get this map. We have little time before the merchant must return it to the official in Paris he borrowed it from.

“The merchant trades spirits for American furs,” Mr. Raleigh went on. “He gathers information for the benefit of his trade and sells it to his Paris connection.”

He narrowed his eyes as he turned back.

“Andrew, your father said you have a rare sense of smell. A wine dealer’s chief instrument of trade is his nose. Do you have the nose of a wine dealer?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“We will find out.”

He pointed to a row of filled glasses, each one on a numbered paper, and an empty bowl.

“Sniff and taste. Match like with like. Swallow none: sniff and taste, then spit into the bowl.”

Another test!
Andrew thought, his heart pounding. He did his best as he sniffed and sipped from the first glass, spat, then sampled the others the same way to find its match. Most were sour to his taste, but the third matched the first, and so it went. It wasn’t hard with the first three pairs. Of the seven glasses remaining, four were sweeter than the others. They stalled him.

His face was long as he set them aside and worked over the other three. He made one pair. The stray was not like any of the others. He was angry with himself, afraid he’d missed something. The men were waiting, watching. He finally gave up and said he thought the sweets were all the same.

Mr. Raleigh’s eyes were hooded. He took a paper and checked the numbers.

He showed it to Mr. Harriot. Andrew couldn’t read the man’s face. Then Mr. Harriot grinned and said quietly, “You have the gift.”

Andrew took a big breath as Mr. Raleigh resumed his pacing.

“So now we have a way of proving to the Frenchman that Andrew and his master are in the wine trade.

“Suppose,” he continued after a moment, “that a wine merchant and his clerk were to call on the Frenchman, offering to trade wine for furs on terms advantageous to the Frenchman. And suppose further that one of the samples they offered had been touched with drug. The Frenchman might enjoy a nap while the boy and his master made a survey of his papers and took what they needed.

“There won’t be time to copy.”

Mr. Raleigh explained that with one of Doctor Dee’s recipes, he’d made a tincture from the sap of poppies.

“The drug is tasteless, almost the color of water. A small drop in his glass will send a large man sleeping. It is called opium.”

He turned to Mr. Harriot.

“Andrew will do for our clerk, but who will be our wine merchant? We need a plain-mannered stranger we can trust who speaks French.”

“Me!” exclaimed Mr. Harriot.

“No,” said Mr. Raleigh, shaking his head slowly. “Our connection is too well known. I need someone rougher in manner than you, someone the foreign agents have never seen here.”

Andrew thought of Tremayne. He was rougher than Mr. Harriot, he spoke French, and he was no part of Mr. Raleigh’s circle.

“Perhaps my teacher at home?” he suggested.

He told them about Tremayne.

“Will he do it?” Mr. Raleigh asked.

“I think so, sir.”

“Why?”

“Because he is all for England in America.”

Mr. Raleigh smiled, then he narrowed his eyes.

“Do you trust him with your life?”

“Yes.”

“Is his manner courtly?”

“As courtly as mine.”

“Courtly enough, then!” said Mr. Raleigh with a friendly laugh. “Write your teacher that you need to see him. Your message must be something only he will understand. Do not sign it. I’ll read it before you write it final in the onion ink. You must assume now that everything we write here is read by others as soon as it leaves Durham House.”

Andrew warmed at the prospect of being sent back to Plymouth on a secret mission. He pictured some of his old schoolmates seeing him in Mr. Raleigh’s livery. He imagined letting out a hint of what he was about.

“What shall I say when I see Mr. Tremayne?” he asked.

“You will ask in my name if he will help us get the map.

“You will say nothing of this to anyone,” he added. “No one here, no one at home, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said, looking down, sure that Mr. Raleigh had read his mind.

“You will travel in your country clothes.”

As Andrew was leaving, Mr. Raleigh called after him, “You will tell Peter and William I am sending you back because you are homesick.”

Andrew stopped like he’d been smacked.

“That last I don’t like, sir,” he said more quickly than was polite.

Mr. Raleigh gave him a sharp look. “You make bold to say so!”

Andrew stood silent as Mr. Raleigh glowered.

“You don’t like telling the others?” he asked.

Andrew nodded.

The man’s look softened. “I have pretended much and done many things I didn’t like,” he said. “I’m not asking of you a tenth part of what it took me to get here. You don’t like wearing a mask? That’s all I’m asking—that you wear a mask.

“Disguising is part of our work. Masks hide our purposes. In what we are about it’s dangerous for anyone extra to know who we are or what our business is. So we go in disguise. Do you understand now?”

Andrew nodded slightly.

“Tell me,” Mr. Raleigh asked, “have you ever met a stutterer?”

“Yes. One of my schoolfellows.”

“Did you notice he was not afflicted when singing or acting a part?”

Andrew thought for a moment. It was true.

“Yes.”

Mr. Raleigh opened his hands. “You’ll find it is the same with you. Some tasks are easier if you do them playing at being someone else.

“It’s like laughing when shamed. I hear you do that well. You have it in you to be one of my actors. Go play your part!”

Andrew half-smiled to himself as he left. He liked it that Mr. Raleigh thought he had it in him to be one of his actors. He could pretend homesickness as an actor. That wouldn’t hurt his pride.

He went to his desk and wrote Tremayne: “Pray meet at my cross midday Wednesday next. Yours for Eden.”

That the note was from Andrew and what they were to meet about, Tremayne would figure from the mention of Eden. With Andrew’s name in mind, he’d know their meeting place to be St. Andrew’s Church.

Mr. Raleigh nodded when he read it.

“Good. Now copy it in the onion ink. It may even puzzle the Spanish ambassador. He’s their chief spy here.”

Andrew turned to leave.

“Wait!” Mr. Raleigh called. “I want to try your nose once more.

“What’s this?” he asked, pushing a vial of black liquid to the boy’s face.

Andrew sniffed and jerked back. It smelled like strong tar. It made his eyes water.

“Naphtha of the Persians,” Mr. Raleigh said with a grim smile. “Now match the glasses again.”

Andrew couldn’t. He couldn’t smell anything.

Mr. Raleigh smiled a tight smile as he nodded. “Watch that no one does that to you again. Your sense will return. The naphtha numbed it.”

He poured some into a dish and struck a spark. Andrew jumped back as the liquid burst into flame with a thick smoke.

“Useful for mischief, if mischief is required,” Mr. Raleigh said quietly. “Monsieur Pena and I once escaped a trap with it. As the Frenchmen crept up to slit our throats, we gave them a splash of naphtha and set them on fire.”

Andrew walked slowly back to the dormitory, imagining Frenchmen with drawn knives in the shadows. At the window, sunlight burned like naphtha.

15

A V
ISIT
H
OME

That night in the dormitory, Andrew told William loud enough to awaken Peter, “I’m being sent back tomorrow because I’m homesick.”

Somehow saying his lines as an actor and not as himself was easy.

He could tell, watching William’s face, his friend guessed something was up. “Will you return?” William asked.

“I don’t know.”

Peter giggled. It was an ugly sound. Andrew lay in bed thinking to choke him.

The next morning, Mr. Harriot gave him money for his trip and a black band to tie around his right arm above the elbow.

“Folks will assume you are in mourning. Be grave,” he said with a wink.

The boy rode hard. He wore the black band and kept to himself where he fed and rested. There were few questions.

The sea wind was sharp against him as he rode down to the coast from Exeter. By the time he reached Plymouth, it was blowing a gale with a fine stinging rain.

He stabled his mount and climbed the twisting narrow stone-paved lanes up to St. Andrew’s Church. The few folks out were muffled against the weather.

He slipped into the church. It was like a huge upside-down ship, dark and silent. It smelled of soap and candles. The gloom was like a mist. He didn’t see Tremayne. Had he got the message? Had someone given him the tincture to read it?

He could hardly breathe. Every sound made him jump. Then a shape he recognized slipped around a corner in the shadows and signaled with his hand.

They didn’t speak. They walked apart, like strangers, down to the water’s edge, bent deep into the wind.

“How did you read my message?” Andrew asked as they crouched under an overhang.

“A merry peddler calling himself Quinch came to my school singing and selling tonics,” Tremayne said. “Only he was no peddler and what he sold me was no tonic. He was strange-looking and dirty—a small streaked face stuck on top of a ragbag body stuffed to bursting with layers of old sweaters over shirts and jackets. You couldn’t tell what was belly and what was wrapping. He stank of onions; he looked like an onion! He grinned and burbled like a man drunk under his striped pack.

“I was about to turn him away when he half sang in his funny voice, ‘I have something needful from your young friend’s master.’

“I took him aside,” Tremayne continued. “The man’s eyes were honest. What made his face look strange were the streaks of soot and red clay he’d smeared on.

“Once we were out of earshot, he fumbled in his pack for a jar.

“‘This will help you read something that’s coming,’ the fellow said, grinning and capering all the while as if he were presenting me with a great joke. I thought him mad, but he hinted enough to make me trust him. As he took my coin, he told me the trick of pouring the potion on the page. But what a smell as the sheet dried before the candle! And then the writing vanished!

“Some potion!” laughed Tremayne. “I hear he called at Stillwell too.

“So what’s all this about?” he asked.

“Mr. Raleigh needs us to go to France, pretending we’re wine merchants,” Andrew explained. “Or rather, you are. I’m to be your clerk. At Marseilles we’ll visit a man who deals in wines. He has a map Mr. Raleigh wants. We’ll take it.”

Tremayne’s mouth sagged open as Andrew spoke. When the boy finished, his teacher shook his head slowly.

“I knew when you went up to London you’d come back with something for me—but this? A plot for two West Country folk to sneak to France and steal a merchant’s papers? And what’s he ever done to us? And what if we’re caught?”

He made his eyes wide and formed his hands in the gesture of hanging.

“Yes! I’m in!” he said with a broad smile.

They agreed to meet a few days later at Durham House.

On his way back up to London, Andrew stopped at Stillwell.

It was noon. The dogs’ greeting made him smile. His folks were just sitting down to dinner. “Andrew!” they yelled as one when he came in. For a moment he couldn’t speak. If there were tears in the rush of hugs, no one noticed.

“Give us news!” his mother called as she bustled to set a place for him. “We have suet pudding—your favorite!”

He told what he could as he ate fast. Then he pushed his chair back, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “I was ordered to hurry,” he said.

“Yes!” they cried as he stood up. “Godspeed! Goodbye!”

He stopped at Rebecca’s. She wore the red ribbon she’d bought with Doctor Dee’s halfpenny. She laughed when he gave her the silk his silver toothpick had come wrapped in. It was the only thing on his person that had any connection with Mr. Raleigh. He’d ordered the boy to travel so spare that, even if he were stripped naked and everything about him were studied, there would be no link to Durham House.

16

P
REPARATIONS FOR
F
RANCE

Andrew sat with Mr. Raleigh, Mr. Harriot, and Pena in the turret, waiting for Tremayne. The boy was jumpy. Despite the heat, his hands were cold when James knocked at the door.

“Yes!” called Mr. Raleigh. With him that word was never a question, always a statement.

“It’s the one what’s come for that one,” said James, winking and pointing at Andrew as he pushed open the door.

As Tremayne stepped in, Andrew saw his teacher through Mr. Raleigh’s eyes—a wiry brown-haired man, dusty and sweat-streaked, in plain clothes. He didn’t look like a gentleman.

Mr. Harriot stood up to make him welcome. Tremayne was as squat and plain as Mr. Harriot was tall and elegant.

“I’ve heard about your time at Cambridge,” Mr. Raleigh said after a long stare. “There is report that one Sunday a certain clergyman there preached against your teacher’s politics. A few days later, a donkey was led up the stairs to the clergyman’s rooms and given strong medicine. The beast was found in its mess with a sign around its neck: ‘An ass purged of its foolishness.’

“Did you have anything to do with that?”

“Perhaps,” said Tremayne. His face gave nothing away.

Andrew was anxious for his friend, but Tremayne was cool and easy.

“Your teacher—Mr. Eden—is reported to have a great interest in Spanish discoveries. Perhaps he has Catholic sympathies as well. Do you share them?”

“Perhaps.” Again, not a flicker.

“So perhaps your interest in America is to see a Catholic colony there?”

“Perhaps.”

Mr. Raleigh smiled. “Then perhaps you will do for us.”

They proceeded to talk over small cakes and cups of Mr. Raleigh’s cacao drink as Andrew sat silent beside them.

At dusk James announced, “Mr. Hakluyt.”

Andrew was startled. He knew that name! Mr. Hakluyt’s book was his bible.

A tall, gaunt man stooped through the doorway. His face was long and narrow, with overhanging brows. There was high color in his cheeks.

“Mr. Hakluyt is chaplain to our ambassador at Paris,” Mr. Raleigh said, introducing him. “It was he who sent us news of the Frenchman’s map. It must be one of the few he has not seen.

“Mr. Harriot you know,” he told Mr. Hakluyt. “The gentleman next to him is our wine merchant in training, Mr. Tremayne.”

Tremayne smiled and bowed.

“I know your book, sir,” Tremayne said. “
Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America
. I’ve taught my students from it—including that one,” he said, pointing to Andrew.

“That sometime student is now our wine merchant’s clerk,” said Mr. Raleigh. “He has the nose.”

Mr. Hakluyt was older than Mr. Raleigh. He looked like a hungry preacher, large-eyed and drawn.

He looked at Andrew and asked, “Do you know why we need that map?”

“Because you’re going to America, sir,” the boy answered.

“Well, some of us are,” Mr. Hakluyt replied, studying him.

“Like nothing else, a map can show where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going—where England’s going. Geography is the eye of history.”

He spoke in a deep slow voice like a Bible prophet.

“Give me a true map and I can master the world!” he said, his eyes boring into Andrew’s.

The way he talked and what he said made the boy’s scalp tingle.

“Here is Marseilles,” said Mr. Raleigh, spreading out a chart and pointing to the main French port on the Mediterranean.

“With Andrew along as his clerk,” Mr. Raleigh continued, “Tremayne will go there in disguise as a junior in the firm of Barnes and Barry, London wine merchants. He will call on the Frenchman and take his documents.

“Let your consciences be easy,” Mr. Raleigh said. “The French have stolen many of ours. You two will even the score a little.”

“His name is Réné Viton,” said Mr. Hakluyt. “His home and place of business are on a hill overlooking the port. He is in his late fifties. Your firm has done business with his for years.

“Our London wine folks know nothing of this, but you, Tremayne, will carry their credential. Andrew will carry samples of the wines you’re offering to trade for furs.”

“And a vial of the opium tincture,” Mr. Raleigh added.

“You will carry nothing to connect you with me or anyone at Court,” Mr. Raleigh continued. “If you’re caught, we’ll not be able to help you. Whatever you say of us under torture, we will deny.

“Those are the terms. Will you do it?”

Tremayne looked at Andrew. Suddenly they weren’t teacher and student anymore, they were like brothers, and, just like brothers about to take on something dangerous together, they began to laugh the helpless laughter that dispels fear.

For a moment everyone in the room laughed.

“Starting now, Andrew, you’ll pitch your voice lower,” Mr. Hakluyt ordered. “And touch a bit of charcoal to your upper lip. Not much, just a hint of what is to come. It will make you more likely.”

He tested their French and taught them something about the wine trade. For days he and Pena lived with Andrew and Tremayne in rooms apart from the others, all their speech in French as they made up conversations about wines and furs and acted out meeting men on the docks who might help them.

In disguise, Tremayne and Andrew visited Barnes & Barry to study their people and their goods. The boy wore a touch of charcoal. He sweated; it smeared.

As part of their education, they learned the names and qualities of a dozen vintages. Then Mr. Raleigh arranged for them to get smuggled into Barnes & Barry’s huge wine vault one night to see how such goods are stored and the measures of pipes, barrels, kegs, and casks. There were spirits enough down there to souse all London, and the air was so close, so dizzyingly sweet, so fumed with alcohol, Andrew and Tremayne got faint-headed. It was all they could do to get out.

“This is for you,” Mr. Hakluyt said the next day as he handed Andrew a worn Barnes & Barry horsehide samples case. Inside were six small bottles of wine.

“And now to Mistress Witkens,” Mr. Raleigh announced.

She was bent over her bench, back to the door, when they all crowded into her workroom.

“Mistress Witkens!” Mr. Raleigh yelled. “Mistress Witkens!”

She turned and rose slowly, snatching up her white bag cap. As she pulled it on crooked, she beamed and made to curtsy.

“What’s the honor I owe your visit to, sir?” she hollered, studying Mr. Raleigh’s face to read his lips.

Mr. Raleigh bowed. “We need vests for these lads,” he said in a high loud voice. “Vests.”

“Vests?” she bellowed, narrowing her eyes. “Vests? Vests in summer?” She scrunched up her face and shook her head.

“Waxed-canvas vests,” Mr. Raleigh hollered, moving close to her. He spoke slowly. “Canvas vests lined with silk they will wear under their shirts, silk side to the body. Each will have a large pocket at the front. No straps or buttons—they will sew them tight themselves when they put them on. They’ll sew the pockets shut when they’re filled.”

He gestured how wide the pocket should be—the width of their chests.

With that, she nodded and began to hum as she measured and scribbled notes.

“What will they be putting in ’em?” she asked.

“No need for you to know that!” Mr. Raleigh snapped.

“I need to know for depth of gusset, Master! Depth of gusset. Gussets and vents bulk things up.”

Mr. Raleigh showed with his hands how much the vests should open out—enough for a thin book.

“Put everything else aside. Make them up as quickly as you can!”

As they returned to the turret, Mr. Hakluyt explained about the vests. “You’ll slip the documents into the pockets, sew them shut, then sew the vests tight around your bodies. You will find the needles and waxed thread you need in the pockets.”

“Now for the drug, Andrew,” Mr. Raleigh said when they got to his room. “I will teach you how to handle it.

“You will flourish your napkin like this, pretending to wipe clean the glass before you pour the sample. With the vial of potion hidden in its folds, you will tap a single drop into the Frenchman’s glass.

“Just so! Now you do it.”

Andrew’s hand shook so hard he emptied the vial all at once.

“Deep breaths,” Mr. Raleigh said. “Take deep breaths.”

The boy practiced until he could do it with his eyes shut, one drop at a time.

“You will carry six drops,” Mr. Raleigh said. “Never taste it.”

It is like poison,
the boy thought as he pinched his lips together.
I’ll be giving the Frenchman poison.