The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez Read online

  Before the stall-holder could put up his flap, I bought half a dozen of his little apples (a farthing), and put all but one in my satchel. As I headed north, I bit into the other. Its skin was crinkled, but it still retained some of its original sweetness.

  Why was I heading north instead of west? As I reached Bishopsgate I admitted to myself that I was heading towards the Theatre. As I passed the Curtain, the play-goers spilled out into the street, heading back into London, so that I had to push my way through them. Then the crowd swelled with those coming out of the Theatre. I had timed it well. When I passed through the archway into the old convent grounds, I saw that most of the audience was gone and the doorman, after handing out playbills for the next performance, was about to go inside, no doubt to scour the playhouse for any coins the audience might have dropped.

  ‘Wait, please!’ I called.

  The man stopped and turned round, looking slightly annoyed. It was the same man who had admitted me free on Simon’s word weeks before, but I doubted whether he recognised me.

  ‘I am sorry to trouble you,’ I said, reckoning it was best to conciliate him, ‘but is Simon Hetherington here today?’

  ‘Aye. Friend of his, are you?’ He looked me up and down and – presumably deciding I presented no threat and would not steal the costumes or the takings – nodded toward the stage. ‘Go through at the back there. He should be about.’

  I climbed the steps he indicated and found myself on the stage. It was a strange sensation, facing in the opposite direction, as it were, and seeing the tiers of seats rising up on three sides of me. They were empty now, but how intimidating it must feel to step out in front of hundreds of faces, peering up from the ground below your feet or leaning over the railings above you, everyone listening to your every word. What if you were to forget your lines? Or trip over your feet? Or otherwise make a fool of yourself? Yet Simon did this nearly every day. Surely I could act a part for three weeks, before a much smaller audience.

  At the back of the stage were two doorways, covered with curtains, through which the actors made their entrances and exits. Between them was the inner stage, a small area reserved for special, more intimate scenes. I was not sure whether there was a way into the back regions of the theatre from there, so I chose the left-hand doorway, pushed aside the curtain and ducked through.

  Almost at once I fell over something. My eyes had not yet adjusted to the dim light and it was crowded here. And chaotic. I had fallen over a throne-like chair, carved and painted to look like gold, though some of the cheap paint came off in flakes on the hand I put out to save myself from falling. There were boxes and chests everywhere, and bits of scenery – a tree, a low table, a ‘rock’ which rolled away when a tall man in an extravagant cloak barely brushed against it. It hit a stack of Roman spears which fell over.

  ‘God-a-mercy!’ He cried. ‘Who left those there? What if I’d knocked them down on my last entrance?’

  He seemed to be addressing no one in particular. Certainly no one replied. I stooped to help him gather them up.

  ‘My thanks, young gentleman.’ He swept me a extravagant bow that would have done credit to any courtier. ‘You are my deus ex machina, my saviour, my knightly rescuer come from mighty Avalon!’ Then is a normal tone of voice, with the merest touch of Kent about it, ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m looking for Simon Hetherington.’

  ‘Over there.’ He pointed to a dim corner furthest away from the stage. ‘He will be shedding his curls and his farthingale, his dainty cap and mittens, and resuming his manly state.’

  He peered at me. ‘Not looking for work, are you? We’re short of boys this season.’

  ‘No, no.’ I grinned at him. ‘I’m a doctor at Barts. I’m just a friend of Simon’s.’

  ‘Pity. We could make a fair damsel of you.’

  This conversation was getting a little dangerous.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I see Simon now.’

  With a quick bow, I slipped away, and found Simon in his normal clothes, but wiping his face with a damp cloth to remove the rosy paint from his cheeks.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘and why were you in earnest conversation with James Burbage?’

  ‘Was that who it was? I didn’t realise. He knocked over some spears and I helped him pick them up.’

  ‘Did he try to recruit you?’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘He’s really worried about how few boys we have to play the women’s parts. I told you we could make an actor of you.’

  I laughed. ‘Not for me, I fear. I have come to offer you a meal, in exchange for the one you stood me, that time you pawned the gold earring.’

  I was suddenly seized with the realisation that I was trespassing on Simon’s professional ground, and was embarrassed. ‘Unless, of course, you were planning to eat supper with your fellow actors.’

  ‘Not at all. No actor ever refuses a meal!’ He tossed away the cloth. ‘Am I fit to be seen in the streets?’

  ‘Nearly.’ I picked up the cloth and wiped a smear of rouge from his left cheek. ‘Now I won’t be ashamed to be seen with you.’

  ‘Come, then. Where shall we go?’ He hooked his arm through mine and led me back on to the stage.

  ‘I can’t imagine how you can stand up here and play your parts,’ I said, tilting back my head to look up to the highest ranks of seats, where I could see the doorman pushing a broom and stopping now and then to pick something up.

  ‘It’s easy,’ Simon said. ‘You just imagine yourself into the skin of the person you are playing. Think as he – or she – would think. Forget who you really are. Once you have truly become that person, it’s no longer pretence. It’s reality.’

  ‘I wonder.’

  ‘Good night, Master Burbage,’ Simon called. The director of the company of players was examining something in the inner stage and waved a hand to us as we left the theatre by the door I had come in.

  ‘Shall we go to that ordinary where we had a meal before?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m in the chinks this time.’ From the weight of the purse Sir Francis had handed me as I left, I reckoned I could stand Simon a better meal than that. ‘Let’s go to the Dolphin.’

  He raised his eyebrows and whistled. ‘You are indeed feeling extravagant, Dr Alvarez.’

  I laughed, but I was a little confused too, not wanting him to think I was trying to outdo his own treat.

  Although we entered the great inn with some trepidation, the servitors did not seem to think we were out of place and seated us at once at a small table in a corner. We supped well on a fine cut of beef roasted in a salt crust to keep in the juices, which meant that it was the most tender meat I had eaten since leaving my home in Portugal. Before the beef we shared a plate of Thames oysters, though I sniffed each one carefully, mindful of Poley’s food poisoning. The beef was served with carrots glazed with butter and honey, and roasted onions. Afterwards we ate a syllabub flavoured with lemon and washed it all down with a very good ale. The meal cost me two shillings, the most expensive I had ever paid for myself, but it gave me pleasure to watch how much Simon enjoyed it, wiping up every last drop of gravy with good bread and chasing the scrapings of syllabub around his dish.

  Perhaps it was the ale, or perhaps the sense of a stomach full of good food in the clean and elegant surroundings of the famous inn, but I found myself telling Simon something of my interview with Walsingham that afternoon. He grew pale and shook his head when I repeated what Sir Francis had told me of events in Paris fourteen years before.

  ‘I’ve heard people grumble about the Huguenots living in Petty France,’ he said, ‘and I knew they had been driven out, but I never knew how terrible it was.’

  I nodded. ‘Sir Francis told me because he wanted to make me understand just how bad it will be here, if the French or the Spanish overrun us.’

  ‘You really think there is a danger of that?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I cannot tell you the details o
f what I do, it is secret, but I suppose it is no secret that anyone who works for Walsingham is engaged in trying to protect England and the Queen from what these traitors and hostile nations would try to do.’

  Simon poured us each another glass of the ale, emptying the flagon.

  ‘I knew you were working as a code-breaker, you told me that before. I didn’t realise that your work was so important.’

  ‘I’m only a small part of it.’ I drank deeply of the ale. It was growing hot as more people crowded in to the dining room of the inn and I was thirsty. It must have been the ale that started me telling Simon about what Walsingham wanted me to do next. With one part of my brain I thought I ought to curb my tongue, but I was so anxious about the task that confronted me that I needed to talk to someone. I did at least have the sense not to mention hunting for and copying letters, only saying that my post as tutor was to be a cover for spying on this suspected Catholic family.

  ‘And you are worried that they will guess who, or what, you are?’

  ‘Yes.’ I nodded, rolling breadcrumbs into pellets as I talked. ‘I mean, I’ve never been a private tutor to a family. I don’t even know how to begin.’

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘When you lived in Portugal and your father was a professor at the university, did you have tutors?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Were any of them young, perhaps a little inexperienced?’

  I thought back. Those days were so far in the past, blocked out by what had happened since.

  ‘There was one. Alfonso he was called. He seemed very grown up to me, but I suppose he cannot have been more than twenty. He was a student at the university, very clever, but his family was not wealthy. I think my father employed him because he needed the money.’

  ‘What did he teach you?’

  ‘Italian and geometry.’

  ‘Can you remember much about him? His mannerisms, the way he spoke, his demeanour?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I can. A little.’

  ‘Then use him as your model. That is what we do when we take on a new part. Find someone, if you can, to base your character on.’

  ‘I see.’ I thought about this for a few minutes. ‘Perhaps I could do that.’

  He slapped me lightly on the shoulder. ‘Of course you can. Just think of it as a part in a play. It doesn’t have to touch you inside.’ He pointed to his heart. ‘Not in here. You are just acting that young, inexperienced but clever tutor.’

  I grinned at him. The ale may have loosened my tongue, but at least it had brought me a way through the dilemma.

  ‘Thank you, Simon. I think that will help. But . . .’ I was suddenly anxious, ‘you must not tell anyone about this. About my work for Walsingham. About this . . . this task I must undertake.’

  ‘I promise you,’ he said, ‘I shall say no word to anyone.’

  Chapter Six

  On Monday morning I kissed my father good-bye, picked up my lute-case, and shouldered the pack containing a few spare clothes, some music and an elementary mathematical book. Of necessity I had told my father something of what Walsingham had asked me to do and I had spent the weekend discussing with him how I should set about teaching my new pupils. In the panic of my conversation with Sir Francis I had forgotten that my father would be able to give me some guidance on how to be a teacher. Although his had always been university students, he assured me that the principles were the same.

  ‘Enthusiasm and praise, those are the two most important ingredients for success,’ he said. ‘If you are enthusiastic about what you teach, you will inspire enthusiasm in your pupils. And for anyone, child or adult, the carrot is always more effective than the whip. Praise every little success and you will make the child try harder, eager for your praise.’

  ‘But what if they don’t want to learn? If they dislike me, or dislike mathematics?’

  I could not imagine that they would dislike music, but there are many who dislike mathematics, or simply cannot comprehend it.

  ‘You must make a game of it. The boy is only nine, you say? Do you remember how I used to teach you when you were nine?’

  I searched my memory. ‘I think there were some number puzzles we did. I can’t really recall them.’

  With that he wrote down a list of puzzles I could use with the younger child, and as he wrote them I found myself remembering the high airy rooms of our home in Coimbra, the inlaid table where we used to work, and the cool sherbet drink, a speciality invented by the Arabs, that was my reward when I did well. I turned aside so that he might not see the tears that filled my eyes.

  ‘I think it is the girl who worries me most,’ I said, as I folded the paper and slipped it between the pages of the mathematics book. ‘She is only a year younger than I am and may be scornful about being taught by someone so young.’

  ‘You do not need to say how young you are, do you? Keep your distance, a little reserved and withdrawn. It will make you seem older.’

  I was uncertain how to be both enthusiastic and full of praise, but at the same time distant and withdrawn, but I did not say so. My father was doing his best to help. He even drew up an outline of the lessons I should give in mathematics and suggested suitable pieces of music to take with me. As a result, I was less nervous on Monday morning than I might have been.

  Less nervous about the teaching, at any rate, but the thought of the spying, the search for letters and even the attempt to copy them – that terrified me. If Sir Damian Fitzgerald was indeed involved in passing secret letters, I did not suppose that he would be so foolish as to leave them lying about in full view. And if, by some remote turn of Fortune’s wheel, I managed to see and copy any letters . . . and was caught in the act . . . my stomach turned sick at the thought. He could have me arrested. Or worse. If he was engaged in treasonous activities, he might not invoke the law. I could well be dealt with privately. A quiet strangling. A knife in the ribs. My body tipped into a river. I shuddered.

  These thoughts occupied my mind as I walked across London just as dawn broke, with the low sun half-blinding my eyes as I headed east toward Seething Lane. Then as I turned a corner, the bulk of the Tower loomed up between me and the sun. If Sir Damian was an innocent man and caught me going through his papers, I could find myself in there. Or if he was guilty of treason, and I exposed it, he might be the one to be enclosed within its grim walls. I had, of course, never been inside the Tower, but the vivid imaginations of Londoners painted an unforgettable picture of the horrors hidden there.

  By the time I reached Walsingham’s house I had worked myself into a sweat of fear. However, Cassie was calmly waiting for me in the courtyard, near the bottom of the back stairs. He was a taciturn man, drab and unremarkable, the ideal servant for a man like Phelippes. He could go about the secret affairs of his master and Walsingham and no one would notice him. He blended so effortlessly into the background as to be nearly invisible.

  ‘Here is a further purse of coin for you, Master Alvarez,’ he said. ‘And if you will follow me round to the stable, I have had a horse saddled for you. We can put your baggage in a saddlebag, but how will you carry your lute?’

  ‘There is a longer strap attached to the case,’ I said. ‘I can sling it over my back. That will be the safest way.’

  He nodded. As we crossed the courtyard and went through the archway to the stables, he handed me two small packets.

  ‘These are the letters of recommendation which you are to give to Sir Damian,’ he said, ‘and in here you will find a map of the way to Hartwell Hall, as well as another showing the shortest route from there to Barn Elms, should you need to leave in a hurry.’

  I thanked him. I would make sure I committed that second map to memory, so that I would not have to depend on reading it should I need – as he put it – to leave in a hurry. My mouth felt dry and I swallowed painfully.

  The stables, like everything else under Sir Francis’s direction, were immaculate. The sun shone in through the open windows,
a light breeze kept the place cool and fresh. The stalls had already been mucked out and the horses’ coats gleamed with grooming.

  ‘This is the horse Sir Francis has selected for you,’ Cassie said, leading me up to an unprepossessing piebald. ‘He thought it best you should not have a mount which suggested wealth, as that might arouse suspicion.’

  I had been disappointed at first sight of the animal, but I could appreciate the common sense in that.

  ‘Besides,’ Cassie allowed himself a small smile, ‘Hector here may not look the part, but he is the fleetest of foot of any horse in this stable. His sire was of Arab extraction. He gets his colouring from his dam. Sir Francis also felt that a swift horse might be of more importance to you than a handsome one.’

  The horse poked his head over the half-door of his stall at me. It was a fine-boned, narrow head, with alert ears and a wise, liquid eye.

  I had ridden little since we had come to London, being obliged to go everywhere on foot, but I suppose it is not a skill one forgets. During those summers at my grandparents’ solar I had ridden regularly around the estate with my grandfather. I might not have his breeder’s instinct for a horse, but I could read intelligence in Hector’s eye.

  ‘Well, my lad,’ I said, running my hand over his neck and rubbing the silky skin beneath his rough forelock, ‘are you as courageous as your classical namesake? Let us hope you will not be required to prove it.’

  Hector was already saddled and bridled, and a groom led him out of his stall, where Cassie helped me strap my pack inside one saddlebag. He called to a stable lad to fetch food which had been prepared for me and pack it into the other. I slung my lute over my back and wriggled my shoulders until it was positioned firmly, then led Hector out to the mounting block. The purse and the two packets of papers I distributed amongst my pockets. I would wait until after I had crossed London Bridge to study the route to Hartwell Hall. There was only one way to start a journey into Surrey: over the Thames to Southwark.