CHAPTER 10

THE SPY

 

 

 

Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui

 

Beware of what you say, when, and to whom

 

 

 

Simon is leading Pacificus to the eel-catcher’s cottage. They go to deliver the clothing to the children from their father. Simon would not go alone, he needs support. Not that they will say anything, or not yet anyway. The afternoon is blustery but dry. The geese, coots and ducks seem unhurried by it, or anything else; for them it is business as usual. Pacificus is uneasy – he would rather not have come; he may be missed. He feels eyes everywhere these days, and there are, even now.

They emerge into the clearing by the cottage but there are no signs of life beyond the wisp of smoke coiling this way, then that, as the wind makes up its mind. The children have been sent to the field to work. Only the bairns are left, and they are shut inside with the adults. A stranger from Yarmouth has come. He is called John Smith – as everyone is today, even Pieter. This is best for everyone’s safety; keep it simple. Today the door is closed and the children away, for there is grave news from the coast and grave decisions to be made. Those closeted indoors do not hear the brothers approach because of the little ones playing and the whirling wind in the alder and birch.

Thinking at first there really is no one present, Simon and Pacificus go to inspect the extension Pieter and the boys have been building. It is then they overhear. “Yes, Brother Smith, all six men captured in port and held for Cromwell’s agents – they will hang at the least. Only pray God they hold out and say nothing of our whereabouts before they die.”

“And the ship?” This is old Sarah’s voice. “And the men at Antwerp? They have been warned, ja?”

“That’s the worst of it, Sister Smith. I am told Cromwell will send spies on the same ship in hope of trapping more honest men in Antwerp – but what can we do?”

It is then someone inside who spots Beth hiding under the back window listening. In the commotion and shouting that follow, the visiting Mr Smith, not really cut out for a life of espionage and already in fear for his life, is abusive and threatens injury to the girl; she is a spy perhaps. How long has she dwelt here? How well do we really know her anyway? Suppose she is in Cromwell’s pay too – she looks old enough for sure!

Pacificus is thinking it might be a good time to leave, when he sees Simon go for the front door – she’s his daughter, after all. The ensuing minutes of explanation and argument are not easy. Sarah insists they all – Beth included – sit round the table on their odd assortment of stools and home-made chairs. “I cannot see so well. You must sit down, all of you.” She is not the sort of woman you can easily deny. This is her home after all and these children, this late fruit of providence if not the womb, have awoken in her all the fierceness of a mother’s love.

Smith of Yarmouth is beside himself. First the girl, now this papist and a leper – who will be next, the Duke of Norfolk? As it happens, next through the door are Richard and Piers, both wide-eyed at so many visitors, and at the sight of a leper sitting up to their table. But there is more to Simon than leprosy, and it is he who talks most and best. He has an interest in the children’s safety, as does the monk, and they must be privy to the whole story, says he grandly, that he may discern how they might “effect a solution”. Smith scorns him. “Even if we told you more, how could you prove yourselves trustworthy? And how can a monk and a leper be of any help in this?”

Pieter was thinking it could have been put a little more gently, when Simon speaks up again. “I see time is of the essence, and we know these children, as you see, are every day in danger. Very well, I will tell you what only a handful of men know in England; knowledge that you will see renders us at your mercy, as you are at ours.”

“Simon!” Pacificus cannot believe his ears. He gestures urgently to silence his brother, who ignores him and plunges on. “We are Sir Hugh and Cecil Erpingham, Hospitaller Knights of Saint John, who have faced Saracens a hundred to one and seen them repelled on land and sea. Yes, that’s right. This really is Sir Hugh, scourge of the Barbary fleet, who made Barbarossa himself appear before him without sword or dagger – ”

“Stop prating like a fool! Enough, I say – Simon!” But his brother goes on all the more, the adults dumbfounded and the children open-mouthed. Can it be that the kind monk with the paintbrushes is really a holy knight after all? Don’t you have to be tall to be a knight? They look at him and he at them, resigned, and he thinks: Tell the whole world, why don’t you? He sighs. What’s said is said; now let the poor creatures have their father’s clothes.

He lays the bundle of clothes on the table then, and begins to explain. “I was with your mother, and your father on the day of his death.” He passes the jerkin and doublet carefully with both hands. “He bade me give you these, Richard. He wanted you to know he loved you – all of you – but especially he said that if he was over-harsh with you, Richard, he was sorry for it; he meant not to bruise you, lad.”

There came a double hush now. Richard, and soon Piers too, was handling the clothing. There were no tears now, just sober nods. They had not taken it so the day Pieter had brought home the news from Norwich. Then – even knowing it must happen – they had raged in bitterness of soul against the world. Both boys had taken to the marshes and wept ’till their eyes burned. Then both, quite independently, had vowed a bloody oath that they would not let the flames have their mother too. Beth had wept much too that day, but she did so cuddling James and Samuel. She loved her stepfather, though they had vied daily. He was all she had ever known, and he had never treated her any different from the others. Her mother had told her the truth of her conception when she was old enough for discretion – not using too many specifics, and after that never mentioning it again. They were a family, the past was past. She had a father, a good man, stern and often awkward but good. And now he was truly gone, she felt the loss of his censure as much as a less sulky girl might feel the loss of a father’s affirmation. A river must needs banks, and this child is like a spring torrent. Today she bears the news and the sight of his clothing with a silent gulp, and a tingling coldness all through her body. Beth lifts up the bairns to touch the garments for themselves. Samuel says “Papa” a number of times, and this undoes her. She cannot hold back the hot tears. “Yes, darling one, it is Papa’s. Now come away and play.”

At this point Smith starts again; he cannot see why these two strange men would busy themselves with the children’s welfare; what business it should be of theirs, whoever they are.

“Call it providence,” Pacificus almost groans, his head in his hands. “I am sworn to help them, and – ”

Simon takes it up. “And by reason of another matter, that cannot be discussed.”

“John Smith” is only barely satisfied, and now Pacificus, losing patience, is curt with him. “My brother has shared information with you – and Saint Stephen alone knows who else besides you – that I’d rather he had not. And yet, sir, we know nothing of you; though if we were spies as you imagine, we would have enough on you either way, for your complicity in this act of piracy, smuggling or treason is manifest. So please, unburden yourself of this information, before I lose my patience.”

And so, reluctantly, and even in front of the children, Smith recounts the whole tale. He tells them that Bishop Tunstall, notorious for seeking and destroying Tyndale’s Bibles in London, is now sent to the continent on official business for the king. His way passed through Antwerp, where he learned of English New Testaments for sale. He reasoned that if he could purchase and destroy them in Antwerp, at source so to speak, he could slow the flood of Bibles entering England. In the course of events, he met Augustine Pockington, an English merchant, who reportedly knew where copies of the Scriptures could be located. Pockington was no Lollard, just a shrewd businessman and a friend to any who brought him trade, at least approximately honest, and Tyndale was one such man.

Pockington agreed to sell the New Testaments to the bishop for four times the normal rate, and Tunstall agreed, thinking he had God by the toe when he had the devil by the fist. He bought the Bibles and had them burned in Antwerp, not knowing Pockington had these Bibles from Tyndale himself, who welcomed the finance for the revised edition. So the bishop got the old edition, Pockington got the thanks, and Tyndale got the money, with which he was able to finance the printing and distribution of his new edition.

It is a consignment of this revised edition now waiting shipment from Antwerp to England. The six men from Yarmouth were bound on Fellingham’s new four-master that very Thursday but now they are arrested, held at the Tolhouse by turnkey Jacob Eames, and it is rumoured by people who know these things that Cromwell will send spies in their place on his and Fellingham’s four-master. Mr Smith wrings his hands until Pacificus thinks the man’s finger bones might pop out and drop to the floor.

“So why have you come here?” Pacificus asks him. “Your presence is a threat to this whole house, surely?”

But it is Pieter, quiet this long time, who now speaks. “He has come to me, if I am not mistaken, because of my years with the Flemish merchant fleet, and because he thinks I will know someone who can help, though in truth I do not.”

“And you have nothing more to report, nothing more to offer?” Simon demands of Smith, who shakes his head. “Very well then, you are best out of here, my man. And tell no one where you have been, or what you have heard here today, or believe me, I will find you.”

Smith of Yarmouth seems eager enough to leave and when he is gone there is silence once more. Pacificus weighs the options. “Will the men in Yarmouth talk under torture? Have they more than their own lives to lose?” Pieter nods.

“And this house, these children, they will likely be exposed?” He nods again and Pacificus slams his hand on the table. “Great saints, man! And all this over some heretic books!”

“The word of God,” Sarah corrects him.

“With two thousand mistakes in it, More said, so don’t lecture me, woman! For one thing, we read the Scriptures every day at the abbey.”

“Ja, ja – but from Jerome’s Latin, with the papal stamp and the papal meanings.” She’s a plain speaker is Sarah; Pacificus ought to beware, Simon thinks. Perhaps they all are, these Dutch. He smiles behind his facecloth.

“And you cannot wait for the Bishops’ Bible? You have to get yourselves hung for this one?”

Sarah, unruffled, says the two are not the same thing at all, and if he’s going to do nothing more than insult Master Tyndale’s scholarship from the original tongue, then he knows where the door is.

More silence, but Pieter is smiling. “When I pray,” he says slowly, “I will beseech the good Lord to send his angel to release these six men, so they can disappear – say, to Holland. And I will ask him to send another, faster vessel to Antwerp to warn our friend Mister Pockington and retrieve those Bibles. For if we do not tie a knot in each end of this rope, I cannot see how we, here, will escape loss or harm.”

Simon leans forward. “We will need a light vessel, but big enough for the cargo. Is there much?”

“Oh – wait a minute, I prithee! Wait a minute!” Pacificus raises his hand, then he takes his brother outside to talk. As soon as they are far enough away from the house, he snaps, “By all the saints, have you lost your mind? Life might not be all it used to be for you since – well, since we returned – but… but this… this is… it’s lunacy. Or is your judgment clouded because you are fixed on winning the affection of your daughter?”

“Not at all. The eel-catcher is right, Hugh. Can’t you see?” Simon retorts stoutly. “If there are any loose ends Cromwell’s men will get more names than they know what to do with – and yours among them, I dare swear. No, I say we get to Yarmouth and do as he suggests.”

“Oh, I see. Break men from prison, commandeer a vessel, outrun Cromwell’s spies – which, if you missed it, ride a four-master – and perhaps even His Majesty’s fleet, and… and then smuggle contraband back into a Cinque port without being caught? You make it sound like a day’s hawking.”

“If anyone could do it – look, Hugh, please!” Simon has his habit by the sleeve, pleading. “I’ve just found her again.”

 

So the two men return to the cottage. No one has moved from around the table; Piers is so far forward on the stool he is virtually falling off it. Beth is occupying the little ones with pebbles and Pieter’s whittled animals, down on the floor. Pieter says nothing; he sees the hand of God in all this, and he’s not the only one. Pacificus feels a net tighten; he should have seen this coming with the children, the trip to Norwich, the conversation with the merchant John Toppes. One, two, three, four, bam! Got you! He feels like Pharaoh looking at the locusts and frogs – you couldn’t invent a God like this. Want to make him laugh? Then tell him your five-year plan! Maybe it’s Sir Thomas Erpingham’s Lollard prayers being answered a century late, maybe his own inarticulate cries to heaven in Fenton’s cell, but dear Christ, what a way to answer a man whose only prayer is for peace in his soul.

Simon gives Pieter and the children a nod as if to say: watch this. A moment later his brother breathes out in a laboured and anguished way, then buries his head in his hands on the table. Well and truly caught is he now, well and truly. There is an old saying among his former comrades that in love as in war, it is the man who despises his life in this world, the one who sallies forth with reckless abandon, that is more likely to keep it. He will do this thing, and do it as if his life depended on it, which it yet may. He rests there for a few seconds then raises his eyes to Beth, risen to her feet and watching him. She looks at him, startled. It’s like a different man: energy and intensity burst from every ounce and crease in his face. The man Rugge lost and looked for is back.

“Maid, go catch up with that man, Smith of Yarmouth. Tell him to get word to the jailed men’s wives, if they have them.”

“What message?”

“Prepare to sail on Toppes’ ship, the Pelican, this coming Thursday on the evening tide, with their husbands, deo volente.”¹⁶ She nods, and goes.

“Master Eel-catcher, you can gain us access to this Merchant Pockington in Antwerp?” Pieter nods. Pacificus spies Fenton’s matchlock, sword and knife atop the mantel. “Good. Then you be at Yarmouth too, and bring your weapons.”

“But I am sworn to lift a hand against no man, as the gospel commands.”

“I see.” He stares now at Simon, his big-mouthed little brother. “Well, that’s a fine thing, isn’t it? The first privateers on the seas without arms. Let’s hope Cromwell’s agents have turned Anabaptist too, and we can all hold hands together, wait to see who is predestined to swing first.”

“Hugh!”

“All right, never mind. But bring them for me, at least. Have you shot and wad?”

“Yes, sir!” Richard pipes up, though Pieter frowns at him.

“Good. Well then, eel-catcher, you must go tomorrow to Alderman Toppes in Norwich with this message, and see that he alone hears it. Tell him Brother Pacificus says, “The bishop remembers your kindness to the poor and wishes to reward you – that is to say, reward you secretly. He has heard of honest merchants suffering from Fellingham’s pride and Cromwell’s avarice. He wishes to covertly redress this by sending a gentleman to Yarmouth this Thursday, to ensure the Pelican makes Antwerp and back before ever Fellingham’s boat looms on the horizon. In recompense, let the Pelican transport some poor Christians on their way to pilgrimage, and bring back a small tonnage of goods as the said gentleman will direct from Antwerp. This, my Lord Bishop enjoins you to perform to the gentleman by way of a payment for his services to you and your guild. You may send permissions for your captain with the bearer of this message, but nothing more, not by any means. Furthermore this business must never be mentioned in my presence or to another living soul, if you wish my palace in Norwich to benefit you again.” Now. Have you got that and how does that sound? Or are you going to tell me now the New Testament enjoins you only to tell the unvarnished truth?”

“You… you are well connected, sir.” Pieter does not rise to the thrust. “This is wondrous indeed, though I fear I will need to write such words down.”

“Very well, man, but the living minute they are committed to memory, burn all trace. That much is crucial.”

“Yes, yes, as you say! But – who, pray, is this gentleman?”

“Aha!” Simon had barely laughed these four years together. It was good to hear it again.

“Oh, we can find clothes to disguise you. But this – ” he pats his tonsure in jest – “this will need one of Hamberly’s velvet caps, with all its bilaments, its ribbons, its feathers and its pearls! Outfits will be the least of our troubles, but yes, a trip to Hamberly’s when he is at Mass might be beneficial to our appearance. Can you wear calf boots, Simon?”

The leper rubs his calves and shins, and feels only a faint tingle. “Riding boots would be better, then I could strap them tight to suit.”

There is more to discuss than this, and still more that the brothers plan on their walk back through the marshes. Three days is not long, for sure, but it will suffice. Any longer and the six men might yield. As they set out, Simon catches sight of his Beth returning from her errand to Smith of Yarmouth. He leaves his brother and walks across to wait for her. “He understood the message?” Simon asks.

“Yes, well enough.”

“I hope he can be trusted, then. The man’s as jumpy as a bag of ferrets.” He frowns, pointing to the bruising just visible around her jaw. “You are happy here? You are treated well?” He’s heard all sorts about these heretics. She explains about their trip back to the farm. He begins to scold her, but then wonders whether he should, whether she knows who he is. She has heard his name now – did her mother never mention the name Cecil Erpingham to her? He looks at her face, but cannot read it; the way she heightens her eyebrows when she listens, the easy but straight smile when he gives up on his reproof. She waits a moment, but he says no more, only looks at her so she curtseys and turns to go, giving him no hint. Perhaps, he thinks, she does know but I am odious to her, dead to her; I deserve no more. He watches her step down the path, the hem of her blue cotton dress tugging on the grass. So it wasn’t just weapons they got from the farm, then. Still, she wears it well. She vanishes round the corner of the cottage, out of his sight. So he does not see her walk behind and run up-river to her quiet place, the place where she can think. She reaches the hemp swing at the water’s edge, the one she made just for herself, and there she stands clutching her stomach and then her heart, and then her stomach again. She paces this way, then that, not sure which way to turn, where to run. “My… my father,” she whispers, but then straightaway covers her mouth, then her eyes, as the hot tears roll onto her cheeks. Yes, of course her mother mentioned his name, the man who left her with child and ran away. And now he’s alive. A leper. A wraith, walking dead. She sits on her swing ever so slowly, and then stares sightlessly across the murky waters.

 

Pieter takes the message, as agreed, to Toppes. The merchant is taken aback but, spurred on by his good fortune and the good favours of the bishop, he quickly makes a note in his own hand for one James Cobbe, the Pelican’s captain, telling him to work with the bearer of it as if his livelihood depended on it – as indeed it does – and thereafter have the commission burnt.

 

Come Tuesday, Simon takes the coracle to the westerly end of Ranworth Broad, where the waters come closest to Hamberly’s manor house. From the deep reeds there, he watches the family process with all regalia and pomp for the Saint George’s day Mass. Hamberly is followed dutifully by all his servants, even the farmhands – not that Hamberly is pious, but rather he can’t bear to think of them at ease while he is at prayer. When they are fully gone from sight Simon steals across to the house. He makes slow work of the locks, listening carefully beyond the ticking clock and birdsong, in case there is anyone inside.

In the bed chamber and closet, his eye lights on a fine pair of ebony masks, no doubt from some tawdry country ball. He had thought to make something from linen to cover his visage, but the man’s one here is full face and quite malevolent in appearance. It will render him both an enigma and an object of terror to his enemies. I’ll have that, he thinks, and with a high-necked linen shirt, my long hair, and riding gloves, nothing of my affliction will be visible. But, to the clothes, what a pretty closetful this man has! I wager old Norfolk himself is not arrayed better than this fellow. How does this man Hamberly wear such garb without arrest? It would never have been so in Father’s day. For myself, I think black, in keeping with the mask – even at the risk of being mistaken for a Spaniard, or worse, a lawyer. Black suede breeches with silver brocade and matching doublet, very fine, but with wool stockings, for it will be cold on the journey. I’ll have a pair of those for Hugh too. Jerkin on top – wool or leather? Best take leather, for there is bound to be trouble if Hugh’s there – and besides, look at the embossed roses on the edge, and even the Beaufort portcullis on the epaulettes. By heaven, this man Hamberly knows how to play the game! And I – he holds it before a glass – I will look every bit the patriot. Leather boots as desired, studs and straps that will have kept a cordwainer busy for a week or two, and look at this double-lined gown! Wool and velvet with silk edging in the Burgundian style, though fewer feathers in the matching cap would have been more tasteful. Now, what else for my brother? Let me see… hmm… I think buff and brown. It always suited him well and besides, most of the rest here is too brash for his tastes.

He bundles up his selection and goes downstairs to see what arms are available. He is not disappointed here, either, procuring two basilard daggers and rapiers, very modern, with belts and scabbard to suit, a fine pair of new matchlocks all the way from Augsburg in Bavaria, and a short blunderbuss – good for clearing the decks.

Simon leaves Hamberly a short note that his brother and he have devised, saying that all his secrets and sins are known to God; that all these objects have been borrowed by angels, and that if he breathes a word to anyone he will be murdered in his bed, or something worse. He reads it through with satisfaction, then leaves it on the man’s desk for him to find.

Pacificus is busy too. His greatest challenge is absenting himself from the community for a period of days without arousing suspicion – well, no more than usual. He sends to Abbot Rugge, tells him he will be away on Wednesday on matters relating to “all we discussed in Norwich last week”. He begs, would he “send word to Prior Thomas”, to smooth things over when he is missed. This is not the sort of game a man can keep up indefinitely. Mendacem memorem esse oportet,¹⁷ he mutters into his cowl, shuffling back to his bed with the others after Nocturne. Yes, yes, and a lot more than a good memory withal. How about the very devil’s luck as well, to finish this business with my innards intact? After this long flight from his past, Brother Pacificus of Saint Benet’s will be a holy privateer once more when he gets up in the morning. Wakeful in his bed, he resigns himself to it, all of it, this refuge from blood and danger having been such a fleeting, brief hiatus. Tomorrow he steps back into that other world without difficulty, without pause, for he knows it well. It will not be hard for him – and this most of all he fears: that it is no hardship, that these years in the cloister have been not so much God’s will as his own fabrication. And he wonders whether, if he resorts to sword and buckler once more on God’s behalf, this will finally bring him peace? Or will he forfeit whatever tranquillity he has found here, in this drafty dorter – one foot in purgatory, the other tortured in the lower circles of hell? What of his course does a man really choose? He has been taught that a wise man overrules the stars, but maybe it is the planets that rule after all? He struggles to sort what is needed in his head against the next day, but is sound asleep within a minute, so deep that Matins and Lauds comes as a cruel interruption.

 

And so the day begins.