Bartholomew Fair Read online

  The woman glanced briefly at my tattered stockings and the pitiful state of my boots, through which my grubby toes poked all too obviously.

  ‘You can bide the night with me, my duck,’ she said. ‘’Tis but a step away, past the bear garden.’

  I shook my head and tried to smile, for it was a generous offer to make to a stranger, and one so clearly poor and desperate as I was.

  ‘You are very kind, mistress, but I have friends in the City. I can reach their house before dark if I hurry. I thank you both for your goodness.’

  I managed a better smile this time, taking them both in, and turned on my heel before my resolution failed. Rikki, who had been lying exhausted on the watchman’s floor, hauled himself to his feet with a sigh.

  I could not spare any of my precious pennies to take a boat across the river, but I must return to the City. Despite my wretched state, I part loped, part ran to reach the gate before it was closed. I would have to go to Sara in Wood Street after all, despite my reluctance to come anywhere near Ruy Lopez ever again. Gasping, my feet bleeding, I reached the Bridge just as the guards were swinging the first half of the gates closed and I slipped through the gap, Rikki clinging to my heels.

  In the middle of the Bridge, I found suddenly that I could not go on. I crouched in a dark corner beside one of the houses and wrapped my arms around myself, for I had begun to shake. My father! He was dead. The reality of my loss suddenly loomed before me, impossible to shut out. For the last seven years we had clung to each other, the rest of our family lost. Never again would we work together, easing some patient’s pain, or exchanging smiles when a sick man rose from his bed and took his first tottering steps. Never again would we sit by candlelight in the evenings, reading or playing music, on either side of the fire. Never again would I feel his hand on my head, saying a blessing over me before I went to bed. I laid my forehead against the damp bricks of the house and longed to howl like a lost child, for now I was truly alone in the world. Rikki pressed against me, shivering and whining. When I took my hands from my face and put an arm around him, he licked my wet cheek, as if to reassure me that I was not, after all, quite alone.

  It was dark, summer dark with a large moon rising through racing rain clouds, when I knocked at last on the Lopezes’ door. A maid opened it, Dorcas, a middle-aged woman I had known for years. She raised her candle-lantern the better to see and did not at first recognise me, tattered vagrant as I seemed to be. She frowned, then her frown changed to a look of sheer incredulity. Behind her Sara rushed forward with an inarticulate cry and put her arms around me.

  ‘Oh, Kit! Are you safe? Ruy wasn’t sure . . .’

  I suppressed the urge to say that Ruy had not cared two farthings whether I had survived the voyage, nor had he offered me any help to reach London, as Dr Nuñez had done. In Plymouth Ruy had ignored me totally. As Dorcas vanished into the back premises of the house, I could no longer suppress the sob which burst from me.

  ‘My father,’ I said. ‘My father.’ I need not hold back my tears before Sara, for she was my only woman friend and one of the very few people who knew my true identity.

  She nodded and patted my cheek.

  ‘I know, my dear. I’m afraid I heard nothing of your father’s illness until it was too late.’

  ‘Joan had abandoned him.’ The words caught in my throat. ‘He died alone and uncared for.’ I was fuelled by anger as well as sorrow. ‘They have taken everything. His creditors. Even my clothes. There are strangers living in our house, and strangers have taken our positions at the hospital. I have lost everything. I don’t know what to do.’

  My voice trembled like a child’s. Had there been anyone to witness us then, I think my disguise would have been torn to shreds. I had no strength to play the man.

  Sara took me by the arm and made no objection as the dog followed me into the house. Soon I was sitting with her in her private parlour, set apart from the large room where visitors were received and Ruy transacted his business. There was a small summer fire on the hearth, for although it was July it had turned wet and windy as dusk fell. I realised suddenly that the shoulders of my torn doublet were sodden. Rikki stretched out before the fire and a thin vapour began to rise from his damp fur.

  Haltingly, for I was almost too tired to speak, I told Sara all that had happened that day. Before I was finished, one of the men servants had brought wine and food, which I ate without tasting, feeding half of it to Rikki, who gulped down every scrap, watching warily from the corner of his eye. He must have had to fight for every mouthful he had scavenged during these last weeks.

  Sara reached across and took my hand.

  ‘I had heard of your father’s death, Kit, but only a week or more after it happened. Things have been . . . somewhat difficult, ever since the first despatches came in to my father from his fellow merchants in Spain and Portugal, that all was not well with the expedition. We offered up prayers for your father. But I knew nothing about his creditors taking away all your goods. Ruy should never have pressed him to invest in Dom Antonio’s Portuguese adventure. Well enough for City merchants with gold to gamble and little to miss if the venture failed. But not for a man like your father, who lost all he possessed so short a time ago, and had to start again from nothing, like a young man who has his life all before him. I cannot forgive Ruy for that!’

  I pressed her hand, but could not speak. I, too, could not forgive Ruy.

  She poured me more wine. I saw that she looked tired and worried. Everyone I knew seemed exhausted after this dreadful voyage, even those who had remained behind.

  ‘Ruy?’ I said. ‘Has he lost a great deal?’

  ‘He made Dom Antonio a loan of £4,000, against repayment when he was restored to his throne. Ruy is determined to have it back, and is this moment writing to the Privy Council, apologising for the failure and seeking the return of his investment.’

  ‘But does the Dom have any money?’

  ‘No. But there was some treasure taken, was there not?’

  ‘Very little. And that will go to the Queen, I’ve no doubt. Anything that’s left will find its way into Drake’s pockets, I’d wager.’

  ‘Walsingham refuses to speak to Ruy,’ she said, getting up and pacing about the room, picking up her embroidery and wandering about with it in her hand, then throwing it down again.

  ‘Walsingham will not speak to him,’ she repeated. ‘The Queen is outraged. The Privy Councillors want their own investments paid back. And his monopoly of aniseed and sumach imports is due for renewal. If he loses that we shall be worse off still. And he will lose it. They are bound to punish him. There is little they can do to Dom Antonio, save keep him in England as a pawn in the game with Spain, so they will punish Ruy in his place.’

  I said nothing, but my face must have given away my feelings.

  ‘Oh, I know, Kit.’ She sat down with a sigh. ‘Ruy is as much to blame as Dom Antonio, but he has had such dreams of returning to Portugal in glory! They are not my dreams, nor my children’s.’

  ‘It was not entirely their fault that the expedition failed,’ I said. ‘If Norreys had kept the soldiers in order in Plymouth, so that the provisions were not consumed, we would have sailed straight to Lisbon and taken the Spanish by surprise. And if Drake had not been more intent on attacking treasure ships and seizing booty than on the purpose of our mission, it might have succeeded even at the last. But Drake lied and betrayed us all.’

  ‘It will do us no good, my dear,’ she said, ‘going over what might have been. Ruy is composing his letter of policy, in Italian if you please, to impress the Council – and telling them that I am ill, which I am not, in order to gain their sympathy – but you and I must decide what you should do. You will live here, of course. The house is more than large enough. And we must have new clothes made for you.’

  She looked at me thoughtfully. ‘How long do you intend to continue with this masquerade, Kit? You cannot live all the rest of your life as a man.’

 
I looked at her, startled. ‘But I cannot give it up! How can I give it up? Now, of all times, when I have lost my father’s protection!’

  ‘You could live quietly concealed here, until your hair is longer. It has already grown while you have been away. That will change your appearance. Then we could bring you out in woman’s attire, and say you are my cousin, newly come from Portugal.’

  For a moment I was tempted. To give up my secret life and become a girl again, no longer afraid at any moment that someone would discover me, as my enemy Robert Poley had done. Poley himself would have no more power over me. Or would he? No, I could not do it.

  ‘I should be recognised,’ I said. ‘Of that, I am sure. Walsingham. Despite his age, he has a keen eye. He would know me. Phelippes. I have shared an office with him for years. Harriot, my former tutor. We have had our heads together over so many mathematical problems. Day after day. That fellow, Marlowe, who has written plays for Simon’s company. He has already as good as threatened me, and he hates anyone with Jewish blood. There’s an agent in Walsingham’s service, Robert Poley . . . If it became known that I had lived in London seven years, disguised as a boy – they count it a crime of heresy, because it flaunts the divine hierarchy, a woman daring to pose as a man. I should be condemned to die at the stake.’

  ‘Deuteronomy,’ she murmured, ‘ “an abomination in the sight of the Lord”. But you must realise, Kit, as you grow older, it will become more difficult to pass yourself off as a man. A girl of twelve can easily be assumed to be a boy, as you were. But a woman of thirty? Where will your beard be then?’

  ‘Not all men of thirty wear beards!’ I said, trying to make a jest of it. ‘Besides, I am not yet twenty, not until come next Twelfth Night. Many young men in their twenties have no more than a wisp of a beard.’

  I leaned forward and took her hand again. ‘Besides, Sara, I am penniless. I must earn my living. As a man I can work, as a physician or as an agent for Walsingham. As a woman I can do nothing.’

  ‘We will look after you.’

  ‘No, Sara,’ I said gently. ‘You have five children of your own to care for and establish in the world. Ruy has lost heavily in this venture and probably will not recover his investment. He may lose his monopoly. If the Queen is angry enough, he may lose his greatest patient. Let me stay here a little while, until I find work. And I will gladly let you buy me new clothes, for I cannot present myself for work looking like a beggar. But let it be doublet, breeches, and hose, not bodice and kirtle.’

  At last she agreed, and we made our way to bed. As I reached the foot of the stairs, following Sara with my candle, I saw that the light still shone under Ruy’s door, where no doubt he was chewing the end of his quill and turning out his fine flourishes of Italian to appease a hostile Privy Council.

  Sara found me a night shift of her own to sleep in, and Dorcas had brought a jug of hot water, soap and towel to the spare bedchamber. I dropped my sword, my satchel and my knapsack with my few remaining possessions on the end of the bed and stripped off my filthy garments with a feeling a joyous relief. I realised that if I had been able to sleep on the floor of Simon’s lodgings, I would have been obliged to retain them, stench and lice and all. I was tempted to drop them out of the window onto the head of the Watch, whom I heard passing along the street below, but that would have been folly, in more ways than one. Instead, I bundled them into a heap and thrust it into the corner of the room furthest from the bed, in the hope that the livestock would stay there.

  I washed every inch of my body with Sara’s fine Castilian soap, and finished by plunging my head in the basin and scrubbing my fingers through my matted curls. Tomorrow I would need to borrow a comb. When I had finished, the water looked as if it had been drawn from a kennel running down one of London’s filthiest alleys. I was ashamed that the servants would see it in the morning, but there was no avoiding that, unless I poured it out of the window. Once I was thoroughly dry, I pulled the shift over my head and it settled softly over my skin, which was still marked by bruises and sunburn, and the scabs left by the bites of fleas and lice. The touch of silk was like a caress on my poor misused body. As I washed, I had seen how my ribs stood out like the frets on a viola da gamba, and my hip bones poked like fingers through my flesh, for until we reached Plymouth I had starved along with the rest of our company.

  Rikki was scratching earnestly as I stepped over to the window and opened the shutters. I feared he was also infested with fleas after his weeks as a stray. Outside, the rain had stopped and the moon, half-hidden in the final scraps of cloud, was dropping down to the west. Leaning out, I could see nothing moving below. I picked up the basin of filthy water and flung the contents out in a great arc into the dark, hearing the splash as it hit the ground below. Surely all the household would be abed now and would not notice, except perhaps Ruy, and his room looked out on the other side of the house.

  The bed was soft, the linen scented with lavender, the feather bed and pillows surely filled with the finest goose down. Ruy was never one to stint himself on the little luxuries of life. I was sinking rapidly into sleep when I was jerked awake by a heavy weight landing on my feet. Rikki had always slept on my bed at home. It would be difficult to make him understand that the dirt and fleas he now carried might not be welcomed amongst the Lopez bedding. He turned around several times, lay down, got up, then padded along the bed until he could stretch out against my chest. I put my arm around him and pressed my face against his thick fur. Holding him close, I finally let my grief break free.

  The next morning I had feared I would have to force myself back into my filthy doublet and breeches, though my shirt and hose had fallen apart at last when I had peeled them off. Yet before I was fully awake there was a light tap on the door.

  ‘Aye?’ I called sleepily.

  With sound instinct, Rikki jumped off the bed and stood wagging his tail just inside the door.

  ‘I have brought you some clothes, Kit.’

  Sara came in, her arms full.

  ‘They are some of Ambrose’s,’ she said. ‘They will be a little large, but better than those rags you were wearing last night.’

  Ambrose was her eldest son, a grown man now and working for his grandfather, Sara’s father, Dunstan Añes. They would certainly be too large, for he was broad in the shoulder and at least six inches taller than I, but they would be wonderful after the horrors of the bundle in the corner. I sat up.

  ‘Sara, you are a marvel,’ I said. ‘Ambrose does not mind?’

  ‘He is living at my father’s house now, and does not need them. Besides, he would be glad to help.’

  She laid the clothes on the end of the bed, then stirred the dirty bundle on the floor with the toe of her shoe.

  ‘What shall we do with these?’

  ‘Burn them!’ I said with a shudder. ‘Not even a beggar would welcome them.’

  She picked them up fastidiously and held them well away from her.

  ‘I’ll give them to one of the men to burn. When you are dressed, come to my parlour. You and I and Anne will break our fast together. Ruy has already set off to deliver his letter in person to the Privy Council.’

  ‘Anthony is not yet on holiday from Winchester?’

  ‘He comes home next week.’ She looked anxious.

  I knew that the Queen had sent the younger Lopez son to Winchester at her own expense, for he was a promising boy. Like her father, the Queen chose to raise men to serve her from amongst the middling sort, preferring them to the sons of the great families, who were petty kings in their own lands. Men who owed everything to the monarch could be counted on for their loyalty. Lord Burghley had once been simple William Cecil, from a minor gentry family, like my own employer, Sir Francis Walsingham. Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake, John Norreys – so many of our distinguished men had risen by reason of their own abilities rather than their ancient lineage.

  ‘Anthony is happy at school?’

  ‘He missed his home and family at first, but now
he has made friends and the masters think well of him.’ She smiled a little sadly. I knew she must be thinking that Ruy’s grandiose schemes for the Portuguese expedition might destroy the prospects of his children.

  I climbed out of bed, reluctant to leave it after the first truly comfortable night I had spent in months.

  ‘These clothes of Ambrose’s will be loose,’ I said, ‘but I will manage well enough with them. I surely cannot wear his shoes!’

  She laughed, for Ambrose was often teased about the size of his feet, which his sister Anne claimed would rival those of the African oliphant.

  ‘You shall have a pair of my plain house shoes. They are near enough like to a man’s shoe. I’ll bring them to the parlour.’

  After she had gone, I dressed quickly. The clothes were indeed loose, but they were clean and comfortable, and made of good worsted cloth, the hose knitted of a fine silky yarn, better than any I had worn since those long ago days in Coimbra. I ran my fingers through my hair and realised again I would need to borrow a comb, for it was densely matted. All this Rikki watched with interest. Looking at him I realised that one of my first tasks would be to bathe him, if he was to be allowed to stay in this respectable house, for he was far from respectable himself at the moment.

  Satisfied that I had done the best I could with my appearance, I made my way downstairs to join Sara and Anne in the parlour. Anne was of an age with me and had become, over the years, a kind of sister, though she still believed me to be a boy, just as her father did. Until now, Sara had kept my secret well. I hoped I could maintain the fiction while I lived cheek by jowl with the rest of the family.

  The next two weeks I spent in a curious kind of limbo. Until I had respectable clothes which fitted me, I was confined to the house, and while I lived here I tried to make myself as unobtrusive as I could. I wanted to avoid Ruy, but this was clearly impossible, and matters were not helped when he encountered me the first morning bathing Rikki in the paved court behind the kitchen premises. We were both thoroughly wet, although Rikki was now clean and – as far as I could tell – free from fleas.