The Queen's Men Read online

  He storms out of the room.

  There is a long silence. At last Cecil speaks.

  “You know he’s right, don’t you, Francis?”

  Walsingham does.

  “It is not for lack of effort, I promise, Sir William.”

  “Well”—Cecil sighs—“we have several days until her birthday. We can make an announcement at Saint Paul’s Cross that she is to come upriver… when shall we say? Early evening? To catch the tide. More dramatic that way. And perhaps permit one or two fireworks?”

  Walsingham reluctantly agrees, as a sop to Hatton, but only from Whitehall.

  “So that gives you nearly a week, Francis, to comb every warehouse and dockyard on both banks from the Tower to Westminster, just in case Saelminck is holed up somewhere like last time. Do you think you can manage that? You will have the Yeoman of the Guard at your disposal, of course.”

  Walsingham thanks him.

  “You are a great one for giving a man enough rope, aren’t you, Sir William?”

  Cecil laughs. His little fat fingers patter across his desk like a spider.

  * * *

  Thanks to Mistress van Teerlinc’s limning Walsingham is able to show the Yeomen of the Guard the likeness of the man they must be wary of, and once they have each seen it, he divides them into two companies, a hundred men each, and for the next week they work their way up both banks of the river. On the northern bank, led by Sir John Jeffers, they move from the Custom House on Wool Quay, all the way through the city, including the Steelyard, and down the Strand to Whitehall and then through the houses that line the bank all the way to the Palace of Westminster. Two Yeomen are left every two hundred yards, so as to ensure nothing changes between the search and the passage of the Queen. The same on the southern bank, though this is an altogether muddier affair, for the bank here is given over to fields and pastures, and is perilously marshy, and Francis gives command of this job to Robert Beale, as a punishment. Again, two men every two hundred paces.

  There is no sign of Saelminck.

  Is that good? Or bad?

  Can it be that Dee’s discovery of him in the Ludgate gaol has put off some plan of his, and he has returned home to Flanders or wherever he came from?

  Who knows?

  All Walsingham can do is pray this is so, and he goes to bed on the night before Her Majesty’s birthday believing he can do no more.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Tower of London,

  the day of Her Majesty’s birthday, September 7, 1578

  But Walsingham is woken before dawn by a thunderous hammering on his gate. Nothing good can come from this, he knows. The night watchman is still with them, and a servant comes running up the stairs carrying a lamp. Walsingham meets him on the landing of his own chamber. Later, he’ll remember that he tried to keep the boy from waking his wife and daughters.

  “What is it?”

  “The Tower, sir! It’s the Tower! Broken into, sir! It’s been broken into!”

  “Into? Someone has broken into the Tower?”

  Walsingham wonders if this is some sort of cretinous joke, the sort of thing Leicester would get up to.

  “The Constable said you’d want to know right away.”

  Walsingham is nearly naked.

  “All right,” he says. “All right.”

  When he gets to the Tower, the sun is risen enough to see by. A single guard at the Lion Gate, looking… what? Odd.

  “Where is everybody?” Walsingham asks.

  “You tell me, sir.”

  Walsingham ignores him and enters the inner ward. Ahead is a knot of men, gathered around the wall in which Dee blew a hole. The hole has reappeared, and alongside it, the rocks, prised from the wall.

  “Mortar never set, sir,” one of the men says. “Told them at the time. I said: it’s too fucking cold—begging your pardon—for mortar to set.”

  “Master Walsingham!” Someone is calling him.

  Behind, over by the lodgings of the Master of the Board of Ordnance. The doors to the vaults gape open. Walsingham turns and walks toward him. He feels otherworldly. It is revealing itself to be a beautiful morning. A pink sunrise. Not even the ravens cawing can spoil it. But they don’t need to.

  “It’s gone,” the Master says. “All of it.”

  Oh Christ. Oh Christ.

  “And his machine. All the bellows and pipes.”

  Walsingham can hardly think straight.

  “Where— Where were the fucking guards?”

  The Master looks at him incredulously.

  “All along the river, Master Walsingham. As you ordered.”

  Walsingham steps down into the vault. He cannot believe it. It must be a mistake. Was it put somewhere else, perhaps? But no. The Master shakes his head. He is further along in his process of acceptance than Walsingham. But every barrel that Dee had drawn off from the naft, gone? It is offensive to his eye.

  “And he stoppered the last barrel only yesterday, too,” the Master says. “Dee. Before taking a barge home, he said, to the comfort of his own bed.”

  Walsingham turns and trudges back up the ramp and out into the inner ward. He goes back to the hole in the wall. The thieves dropped a couple of beams across the moat, along which they must have rolled the barrels. He steps out through the hole and walks along a beam. The moat is refreshed at high tide, but it is low now. On the other side he sees their tracks in the dust. It has been a dry summer and the grass is brittle. He can follow them, slipping slightly down onto Tower Quay. From there, a boat of course. And from there?

  Christ.

  Anywhere.

  Walsingham stands with his hands on his hips and stares up and down the dimpled length of the Thames. He imagines—what? That he will see the thieves sailing away with his Greek fire? Stop, he will shout. Stop! Come back!

  He feels a type of savage fury. He wants to strangle something. Himself even.

  But then, he thinks, At least now we know why Saelminck lingered in London: to steal the Greek fire. Cecil was a fool to make it known we had it.

  My God. What is he going to tell Cecil? What is he going to tell the Queen?

  Let someone else tell them? Or try to control the story?

  Oh Christ. Is it too late for that?

  He must go and find Cecil. He will be at Whitehall.

  Walsingham has no time for a wherry. He will walk. He sets off. At times like this he misses Robert Beale. He imagines Beale misses him, stuck over the river in Rotherhithe. He walks purposefully: Stockfishmonger Row; Thames Street; then over the Fleet on the covered bridge and behind Bridewell Palace onto Fleet Street. He is sweating and muttering to himself as a man out of his wits.

  “They will put you in Bedlam, sir!” one of the Yeomen of the Guard calls out.

  Fleet Street, Temple Bar, the Strand.

  Elsewhere the day has that peculiar stillness that often comes before a big event: as if the place is holding its breath. He cannot describe the umbrage he feels, the personal offense he has taken against the thieves. He feels lost, floating, spinning as a cork in a millstream. What has just happened? Did someone plan to steal the Greek fire back in— When did they rack Jenkinson? January? February? Was it that long ago? Or was this an opportunity seized? He thinks again of the stern bluff of the Tower’s curtain walls; its towers; its moat. No, he is suddenly certain: this was a long time in the planning. He thinks of those bloody masons—working away silently, and of how he believed they had fallen under the Tower’s oppressive spell. My God. It was probably Saelminck there himself! He could have been the foreman, knowing the mortar would never set. It was like keeping a key! And all he needed to do was wait! Wait until the Greek fire was ready and then, just when it was, and Walsingham had reduced the Yeomen of the Guard to a skeleton crew—because he thought Saelminck planned an attack on the Queen—he struck!

  Finally he is here, at Whitehall, in a muck sweat.

  “Why, Francis,” William Cecil greets him. “Yo
u look flustered. Is all well?”

  Cecil has not heard. He cannot believe it.

  “No.”

  He sits, deboned.

  “Gone?”

  Walsingham nods. Cecil turns to look out of his window. After a while he turns back.

  “Where?”

  Where? Spain? France? The Low Countries?

  “If I knew, do you not think I would be trying to get it back?”

  They decide on a course of immediate action: Send messengers to Edward Clinton, the Lord High Admiral. Instruct him to put to sea every ship at his disposal: they must comb the sea lanes of the Narrow Sea; they must stop and search every ship. They must investigate every cove and inlet on every shore from Lincoln to Dorset, from Brill to La Rochelle. They must not lose that Greek fire. They cannot lose that Greek fire. Clinton must send it to the bottom of the sea rather than let it fall into the hands of the Spanish.

  “Christ. We should never have kept it in the Tower. We should have kept it in Sheffield, right under Mary, Queen of Scots.”

  Messages are sent to every constable in Kent and Essex and Suffolk, too: they are to watch the roads as never before. Their searchers must examine every barrel. But for their own sake, do not use lamps or torches.

  Christ. Christ. Christ.

  “We have to cancel this procession of Her Majesty’s. Tell people she is sick.”

  Cecil looks alarmed.

  “It is not only the people who want it, Francis. You will have to tell her she is sick, too.”

  “We can’t let her do it.”

  Cecil is silent for a moment, stroking his beard.

  “Stop it, please, Sir William.”

  He means the beard. There is no time for this sort of thing.

  Cecil stops.

  “No, I was only thinking, Francis, that if you believe this Saelminck has stolen your Greek fire—”

  “Your Greek fire?”

  “Our Greek fire, then, then surely, he will have, as you say, set off for Artois or Hainault or wherever we believe he comes from. He will not linger to take a pop at Her Majesty, will he?”

  Walsingham stops for a moment. He supposes that is true. If he had managed to steal this magical weapon, then he would not linger to be caught. He would want it home. Cecil pursues the thought.

  “It is terrible news, Francis. But we might at least turn it to some advantage, surely? Saelminck is gone, so we may give Her Majesty the birthday she wishes, and then, tomorrow, we can come together and decide what it is we must do. You have secured the banks of the river, haven’t you? Made them safe? And so let us, at least, enjoy this day.”

  Walsingham lets out a long, shaky sigh. He is not so sure. But Cecil is a reassuring figure, and, also, crucially, outranks him.

  “Very well,” he says. “If you are sure.”

  Cecil smiles.

  “I am.” Cecil does his best to laugh. “And it places you further in my debt, Francis, for in canceling your cancelation, I have saved you another lecture from Hatton on the meaning of the word majesty.”

  That is true.

  “Majesty does not cower!” Cecil imitates.

  “Thank you, Sir William, if only for that.”

  “My pleasure, Francis. Now go home, change your clothes, and make yourself ready. We will dance, for today at least, and deal with tomorrow as it comes.”

  “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof?”

  “Precisely.”

  Walsingham nods a doubtful thanks and turns to go in search of a wherry downriver.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Southwark, south of London,

  the day of Her Majesty’s birthday, September 7, 1578

  Beale knows he is given charge of the south bank of the Thames as a punishment for what he has done, and what he has failed to do, and he knows he will have to accept many more of these sorts of jobs in the future if he is ever to regain Master Walsingham’s trust, and so he is busy and ardent about the task, much to the dismay of the Yeomen who had hoped for a few days’ rest, and perhaps, even, the chance to dip into Southwark to sample its fleshy delights. His second-in-command is resentful and from the northern parts, a man named Samuelson. He rides at a pace slower than Beale’s, and whenever they ride somewhere together, he arrives a moment later than Beale, so that his men are uncertain whom to address. It has not stopped Beale riding up and down the river four or five times a day, from the dismal sludge of Rotherhithe, through Southwark and past the inns that line bankside: the Castle; the Bull; the Hart; the Elephant; the Bear; the Hartshorn; the Barge; the Unicorn; the Boar’s Head; the Cross Keys, and finally the Fleur-de-Lys. Theaters are being built among the bear gardens and the brothels and he has been careful to talk to the men on-site. None admit to knowing of any Jan Saelminck or Henk Poos.

  Now it is nearing noon, and there has been nothing of note all morning. The crowds are beginning to gather, but it is supposed most of the interest will be on the other side of the river until the evening, when it will become very busy on this side, where licentiousness will flourish beyond the reach of the city authorities. By then, though, Her Majesty will have passed, and he—Beale—and Samuelson and his Yeomen will be gone about their business elsewhere.

  “Some of them fucking playactors are setting up a stage on the bridge,” Samuelson tells him. Samuelson has not time for playactors. He really hates them. So though the bridge is not their responsibility, Beale sends Samuelson to have a look, while he himself rides westward, to speak to the sunburned men posted into the fields and marshy inlets farther upriver. It is all quiet, and when he gets back Samuelson smells of drink and is reconciled to playactors.

  “They’ve got George and the fucking dragon,” Samuelson tells him. “The dragon’ll sit in its cave and then when Saint George comes along, looking for it, it’ll come out blowing fire and so on, and George’ll cut his fucking head off. Where’s the harm in that?”

  It does sound pretty good.

  “Won’t they block the road, though?”

  Samuelson shakes his head.

  “They’re using the frame of the new house going up, the one they’ve sent over from Holland.”

  Beale grunts.

  “Let’s go back,” he says. “Look toward Rotherhithe.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Whitehall Palace,

  the day of Her Majesty’s birthday, September 7, 1578

  The morning has passed agreeably enough, with a game of cards at which she beat Mistress Parry and won sixpence, but Jane Frommond has concluded that she will ask to retire from court before Christmas. She has no clear idea what she will do, but her father left her a small income, and if she is honest, she is unhealthily bored by this life. Perhaps it was the time spent with Dr. Dee in Sulgrave? She wishes she had traveled, she thinks, as he has. She wishes she’d visited Leuven, Prague, Basel, and Geneva, and she thinks that perhaps now is the time.

  But today is Her Majesty’s birthday, and there is to be a masque, and dancing, at Westminster Hall, and so she must make her way there, but there are no wherries on the river, since they’ve been banned by Master Walsingham until the Queen has arrived in her royal barge, and so Jane decides that she will ride, perhaps, and see if she cannot shake off her lassitude that way, and so she makes her way to the stables.

  “Hello, Mistress Frommond,” the stableboy addresses her.

  “John,” she remembers. “God give you good day. How are you?”

  She has not seen him since the day they rode to Stepney to see the pornographer.

  “Fair to middling, mistress. Can’t complain. Risen up.”

  He does look well and is wearing boots, she sees, of stout leather, and a doublet of the Queen’s colors. He asks after Dr. Dee, whom he has not seen since that same day.

  “I think fair to middling, too,” she tells him, though she has not seen Dee since they came down from Sulgrave, so horrified and alarmed. She believed he had gone to Wales, w
hich he claimed he always did every year, to seek King Arthur’s treasure, though she was never to admit to anyone that this was what he was up to.

  “Are you here for a horse, mistress?”

  She is. He finds her the same pony she rode on that time before, and saddles it for her, and holds out his knee to help her up onto the saddle. When she is set she thanks him, and she is about to ride off when he clicks his fingers.

  “Oh, miss,” he says. “I saw your young gentleman today.”

  She is at a loss.

  “The fellow you showed me the little picture of, all those months ago?”

  She feels her hair rise on end.

  “You saw Jan Saelminck?”

  “If that’s his name, miss, then yes.”

  “Where? Where did you see him?”

  “He was on the bridge, just where they’re putting up that new house. Didn’t recognize him at first, since he was dressed in a funny way, and he was with a load of blokes who sounded a bit off, if you take my meaning?”

  “When?”

  “First thing this morning.”

  “By the bridge?”

  “North side. Where they are setting up all the stages for Her Majesty’s pageant and that.”

  The pony has picked up on her anxiety and she must walk it around.

  “You are certain?”

  “Well, no. But I saw him and I could’ve sworn I knew him, and then I remembered he was the one ambling around the yard that time, just after… just after my old man got himself shot? I helped you with Mistress Rutherford’s coffer, and you showed me the limning, remember?”

  She does, vividly.

  “You did not… tell me you had seen him in the yard?”

  “Ah. Well. He— To be honest miss, he gave a shilling not to mention him. It is why I remembered him. I’m sorry. I was that hard up.”