The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez Read online

  ‘I must send word to Dr Lopez or Dr Nuñez,’ Phelippes muttered absently.

  I looked up in surprise. ‘Why?’ I said, startled into abruptness.

  ‘They are both partners in the Spice Trust,’ he said, studying me as if he had noticed me for the first time.

  ‘Yes, as well as their medical practices.’ I was still puzzled.

  He seemed to come to a decision.

  ‘The partners in the Spice Trust still trade with the whole of Iberia,’ he said, ‘despite the fact that Portugal is now in the clutches of the Spanish monarchy. And you need to understand this, Kit. Through the major spice routes via Arabia and the Ottoman Empire, and through the merchants of Venice, news of the whole known world flows into the mercantile houses of London, Antwerp, and Calais, and so reaches Sir Francis.’

  I nodded. I could see this might be true, though I had never thought before that the spice trade might be a source of information for Walsingham.

  ‘Dr Nuñez has a cousin in Calais, Estevan Nuñez, whose business in precious gems serves as cover for a postal route bringing information to us.’ He glanced down at the pile of documents on his desk. ‘Sometimes we also use it for certain deceptions passing out from London, which are slipped – and not by accident – into the hands of those who will report to ambassador Mendoza and King Philip of Spain.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said slowly, ‘I see.’ Indeed I was beginning to understand that the work of Walsingham’s office was not simply the interception of letters in order to forestall acts of violence against England and the Queen. Sometimes Walsingham would decide to poke this wasps’ nest of conspiracy, in order to see what would happen. Letters could be infiltrated through this very route Phelippes described. I felt a frisson of something – was it fear or disgust or even excitement?

  We said no more of this but worked on until after dark, lighting candles lavishly to help with the close scrutiny the decipherment demanded, until Phelippes looked up from his desk, took off his spectacles, and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘We will need to work all night, Kit. I will send a servant to tell your father that you will not come home.’

  I nodded, inattentively. I was absorbed in laying out a new grid for the alphabet and testing it against the message. Despite my dislike and fear of Poley, and the means by which I had been brought here, I was still fascinated by the mystery and variety of secret codes. I have to admit to a certain pride in my successes. When Phelippes returned, he was followed by a maidservant carrying a tray with cold pies and fruit and small ale.

  ‘I think I have it,’ I said. ‘It needs a double decipherment – first a displacement and then a grid, but I haven’t solved the grid yet. It’s in French.’

  ‘Eat something,’ he said, kindly enough. He was a driven man, and drove those who worked for him, but a good master will feed his horse when needed, and fatten his cattle the better to profit from them.

  I began to chew a piece of pie absently, holding it in my left hand while scribbling with my right. Phelippes looked over my shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes. You have it. You’ve done well, Kit. The other message will be in the same cipher, for they are both in the same hand. The rest of the work will take time, but no more detection.’

  He sat down in his chair and steepled his fingers together, as he often did when pondering.

  ‘I see that your rough notes are written in a very different hand from the fair copies you make for me.’

  I swallowed a mouthful of pie and washed it down with a gulp of ale. It was past midnight and suddenly I realised how hungry I was, for I had not eaten since noon.

  ‘You would not be able to read my notes, sir, they are so ill writ.’

  ‘Do you think you could imitate another’s hand?’

  Startled, I stared at him. ‘I’ve never tried.’

  ‘This, now.’ He winged a document across the room at me and I caught before it fell off my desk.

  ‘Curll’s hand?’ Curll was one of the Scottish queen’s secretaries, along with another called Nau.

  ‘Try it,’ he said. ‘Give me that key you have worked out for the new code and I’ll decipher the other document.’

  I studied the letter. It was one of those we had intercepted on its way out of Chartley, where the Scottish queen was still held prisoner. The route via the beer barrels contrived by Walsingham and the agent Gifford continued to work smoothly. Mary and her supporters still believed it was their own secret means of communication and that Gifford was a Catholic ally.

  Gifford was a more trustworthy agent than Poley. He brought the letters retrieved from the beer barrels first to us, where they were unsealed by Arthur Gregory and deciphered by Phelippes or by me. Gregory would then reseal them so skilfully with his forged seals that the most careful inspection would reveal nothing. Gregory was an artist, in his way. Once resealed, the letters were delivered to the French embassy. It was essential that there should be as little delay as possible, lest suspicion be aroused, hence Phelippes’s need for my assistance when there were many documents to decipher in a hurry. The letter in my hand was one I had deciphered earlier in the evening and placed in the pile for Gregory to seal in the morning. It would then be carried by Gifford to the embassy before noon, to be sent on its way with the others destined for the conspirators in Paris and Rheims.

  I took a fresh sheet of paper and began to copy the letter, noting carefully the direction of the strokes and any unusual turns or flourishes to the characters. When I was finished, I carried it across to Phelippes. He took off his spectacles (for very close work he saw better without them, since he was short-sighted) and tilted my effort toward the candle-flame.

  ‘Hmph.’ He nodded at last and put the paper down. ‘That might deceive someone who did not know the hand. Do it again.’

  ‘But the deciphering . . . ‘

  ‘I can finish it.’

  He made me copy that letter a dozen times before he was satisfied, and I was growing angry at the mindless task. When I flexed my tired fingers and sat back, kneading my aching temples, he laid another letter in front of me.

  ‘Now try Mendoza.’

  It was well past dawn before he let me go, and as I was setting my cap upon my head, I ventured to ask him – and I did not usually dare to do such a thing – why he had made me copy the writing.

  ‘Sometimes, Kit, it is helpful to add a line or two to a letter, to speed matters along their path. To . . . stir the pot, let us say. Therefore it will be useful if you learn to forge the hands of Curll and Nau and Mendoza. And of course Morgan and Babington. You know that the man Ballard, the Catholic priest who passes himself off as Captain Fortescue, is due back soon in the country again, conspiring with that group of headstrong young men?’

  I nodded. Ballard – who was, like Thomas Morgan, a long-standing enemy of the Queen – was now known to be raising an army of Catholics on the Continent, aided by Morgan and financed by the Duke of Guise. This much had become clear from the letters we had intercepted lately. It was no longer a matter of vague hope amongst the exiles. This time the threat was real. Sir Anthony Babington, to whom two of the letters from Hartwell Hall had been addressed, we now knew had gathered around him a group of young English Catholics – Tycheborne, Salisbury and others. Their role was to secure certain ports for the landing of the invasion and to create an army of like-minded rebels to join the foreign forces once they had set foot on English soil. Together they would overthrow the government. We were following every step of the conspiracy through the intercepted correspondence and through Barnard Maude, another of Walsingham’s agents, who was posing as Ballard’s companion. A few weeks ago Phelippes had provided the two of them, Ballard and Maude, with forged passports so that they could travel to France, to contact Morgan and the Duke and make further arrangements for the invading army of French and Spanish troops. Easing their departure was a little more of this stirring of the pot.

  ‘Why forged passports?’ I had asked, because Phelippes, a
s Walsingham’s chief man, had the authority to issue genuine ones, sealed by Sir Francis himself.

  ‘Perfectly genuine passports would arouse Ballard’s suspicions of Maude,’ Phelippes explained patiently, as if to a child, ‘so I forge my own passports – very good forgeries, but not quite perfect. The customs officers at the ports know to let them pass.’

  ‘If Ballard is coming back,’ I said now, ‘does that mean they will act soon?’

  ‘Soon, perhaps, but not too soon. Babington’s young men are full of talk and wild dreams, but they are not the men of action Ballard would like. So we need to encourage them.’

  ‘Encourage them to invade England!’ I was horrified. ‘And kill the Queen! Has not the man Savage made a solemn vow, witnessed in church, to kill the Queen?’

  ‘Aye, but he drags his heels. I think he is terrified, now that the time has come to take action. Another man who is all talk. Gifford is busy reminding him that he must not fail in his vow. No need to worry, Kit. We watch Savage night and day. No harm will come to the Queen. But we need to spur the young men to more action. Babington is our man, I think. An idealist, easily fired up, but weak and vacillating. As you know, I recently sent Robert Poley to befriend him. Poley was in the ear of Morgan last year in Paris, so Babington will believe him to be a loyal supporter of the Scots queen. I am awaiting a report from Poley later today.’

  I swallowed hard, and whatever the politics of Anthony Babington I felt pity for him at that moment. If Walsingham said that my help in deciphering documents would protect the Queen and the country, I would do my part willingly. But I did not like this tampering with letters, forging additions to them, provoking assassins and half-hearted conspirators to act. This counter-conspiracy of Walsingham and Phelippes – what they called a ‘projection’ – seemed to me less directed to protecting our Queen than to bringing about the final destruction of her cousin, the Scots queen. It had about it the rank smell of evil.

  The evening of that same day when I had left Seething Lane at dawn, my father and I were to dine with the Lopez family, although I was reluctant to go, after working all night with Phelippes and all day at the hospital. However, I knew that it meant much to my father that the more distinguished members of our Marrano community in London sometimes invited him to their houses, so I donned my best clothes and hoped I would not fall asleep with my head in the soup. Although he could not return their hospitality, my father could not refuse a courteous and pressing invitation.

  As we set out, a fierce summer storm broke out overhead, so that by the time we arrived my shoes and hose were soaked. Sara bustled me away to borrow dry hose and shoes, and as I changed she told me that Hector and Beatriz Nuñez were to join us, as well as Diego, a cousin of her husband, and her own daughter Anne, who was near my age.

  ‘These will be dry by the time you leave, Kit,’ Sara said, spreading my hose out by the fire in her private parlour and setting my shoes in the hearth. ‘Are you well, my dear?’

  It was only when we were alone that she would address me thus, for apart from my father – and now the despicable Poley – she was the only one who knew my secret. She put her arms around me and embraced me against her soft breast. I felt tears rising, and wished I could lay my head on her shoulder and tell her everything about my work with Phelippes and how I hated the world of lies in which I was trapped. She had discovered my sex when I had first come as a frightened child to London, but had been sworn to secrecy and had told no one, not even her husband.

  ‘I would be glad to be rid of my service to Walsingham,’ I said, but I kept my voice measured and cool. ‘I like it not. I want to spend my time caring for the sick, not mired in intelligencing and codes and plots.’

  She held me off at arm’s length and regarded me seriously.

  ‘I am afraid Ruy is becoming ever more entangled in just such affairs. You are right, Kit. It is safer to have nothing to do with such matters.’

  She smiled a little bitterly. ‘Ruy must have his finger in every pie where Spain and Portugal may be concerned. I do not like some of the men who bring messages to him, always muttering in corners.’ She glanced over her shoulder as she spoke, for Sara was always more frank with me than in company, but cautious of being overheard. ‘Take care, Kit, for I fear they will try to draw you in. They are in need of vigorous young men in their midst.’

  We both laughed.

  ‘My father was somewhat concerned that Anne and I are both to sit at table tonight,’ I said. ‘He thought Dr Lopez might be planning a match between us, but I assured him that he would be looking much higher than the son of a lowly physician to the poor of London.’

  Sara gave an impatient sigh. She would have been happy to live quietly in London, where she had been born, daughter of Dunstan Añez, and had spent her whole life. She would have been content, enjoying all the honour of being wife to the Queen’s physician, but her husband had always been a wild dreamer, ambitious and greedy for power and gold. The persecutions that our people have suffered can poison some men that way. They will never feel secure, however high they rise, however vast their riches.

  ‘Ruy has great plans for Anne,’ she said. ‘Your father need have no worries.’

  I gave her a quick hug, but we had no time for further talk, and made our way to dinner. Hector and Beatriz Nuñez had arrived in our absence and soon we were all seated at the magnificent table made of some highly waxed foreign wood.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr Lopez, when my father admired it. ‘I imported the timber with my last venture to the Portuguese East Indies and had it made up here in London, by the finest craftsmen.’

  He ran his hand possessively over the silky, gleaming surface. It drew your fingertips, and when he was not looking I stroked it myself, loving the feel of it, smooth as a baby’s skin.

  ‘And these I purchased from one of Drake’s hoards, taken from a Spanish merchantman.’ He lifted one of a pair of ornate silver candlesticks, which looked as though they had been looted from a cathedral. From the way he hefted it, I could see that it was monstrously heavy.

  ‘These carpets were from the same hoard.’

  The Turkey carpets were a rich red, a colour monarchs might wear at their coronations, woven with deep forest greens and costly indigos. We walked upon these carpets with our careless shoes, carpets which in any other household, except perhaps the Queen’s, would have been hung on the walls or laid over a table. The ones I had seen at Walsingham’s house seemed paltry rags by comparison.

  ‘Yes,’ Lopez said, raising a delicate Venetian glass and swirling the wine against the light, ‘I’ve found that the monopoly on the import of aniseed and sumach is proving very profitable.’

  I looked down at my plate, feeling myself flush with discomfort. Dr Nuñez also seemed embarrassed at such vulgar ostentation. He was himself rumoured to have great wealth, earned both from his noble patients, including Burghley and Leicester, and his trade in spices and precious stones, but he never made show of it. His house was large and comfortable, but discreet.

  As the men talked I was growing more and more sleepy, and my attention wandered. I found myself picturing strange jungles of the far east where the trees had grown which provided the wood for the table. Were they filled with monkeys, peering between the leaves with their sad faces, so like wizened babies? I imagined rainbow-coloured birds flying and screeching overhead, while about the forest floor lizards like miniature dragons darted or froze into stillness, watching every movement of the leaves with a cold unblinking stare. So many strange lands our mariners were discovering, races of people who had lived for centuries in ignorance of us as we had lived in ignorance of them.

  The candlesticks – where might they have been stolen by Drake? He could have seized a Spanish treasure ship, loaded with gold and silver from the lands of the New World, so rich in precious metals and gems. But then Ruy Lopez’s silver would have been in the raw state. These candlesticks spoke of fine Spanish craftsmanship two or three hundred years old. They mu
st come from one of Drake’s expeditions looting Spanish coastal towns, where he would have stripped every church and public building of its treasures, and every private home too, unless the terrified owner paid him a fat bribe for immunity. That seemed more likely to me than this mention of a captured merchantman.

  Up and down the table, the talk was all of the possibility of a Spanish invasion here in England.

  ‘If they provoke us first,’ said Ruy, ‘then we shall be justified in striking back. It will be our chance to land in Portugal and set it free.’

  ‘And where will you obtain your army and your fleet, Ruy?’ Dr Nuñez smiled at him over the rim of his wine glass. ‘I do not think you will drive the Spaniard out of our homeland with our handful of unarmed merchant vessels and a few Portuguese exiles.’

  ‘Once she sees how dangerous the Spanish are to the peace of all Europe, the Queen will support our enterprise,’ Ruy said confidently. ‘She will understand that there is profit in it for England too.’

  I had been hearing this kind of talk almost since we had arrived in England. I could not understand what spurred on men like Ruy. He had a distinguished position here as chief physician to the Queen herself. He had wealth, a fine house, comfort and above all safety. Why should he wish to sacrifice it all? I would not let him see my smile, but I thought to myself: The Queen knows, more than you do, what is planned against her by Spain and France. Even I know more than you do.

  With difficulty I kept my eyes propped open and watched Sara’s elegant mantle clock as the hands crept towards the time when we could, with politeness, leave, and I could at last lay my head on a pillow. It was midnight by the time the talk wound down at last and my father was able to tear himself away. He had not said much, but I noticed that he listened intently to the talk of freeing Portugal from Spanish rule.

  Ruy summoned two link-boys to light us home, a luxury we would have done without ourselves, but it was generous of him, even though it was also another means to demonstrate his wealth. The journey across the city seemed much safer under their protection than when I crossed it alone.